Legal Actions
Allason has been involved in a number of legal cases, in which he represented himself without lawyers.
While in the House of Commons, he campaigned against the use of Public Interest Immunity Certificates, and exposed the arms-dealing activities of the billionaire publisher Robert Maxwell. He was sued for libel by Maxwell but won the case, winning record damages for a litigant in person by counterclaim.
In 1996, Allason sued Alastair Campbell for malicious falsehood with regard to an article printed in the Daily Mirror in November 1992. The case was heard by Justice Maurice Drake, without a jury. The judge ruled that Allason had failed to demonstrate that the Daily Mirror article, though inaccurate, had caused him any financial loss. In a retrial in 1998, he was awarded £1,050 in damages and 75% of his costs.
In 1998 he brought and lost a libel action against the BBC show Have I Got News For You, suing over comments made in a book based on the show published in 1996, which read: "...given Mr Allason's fondness for pursuing libel actions, there are also excellent legal reasons for not referring to him as a conniving little shit". He subsequently lost the case.
In 2001, Allason sued Random House, the publishers of The Enigma Spy, an autobiography of the Soviet agent John Cairncross. Allason claimed he had ghostwritten The Enigma Spy in return for the copyright and 50% of the proceeds. However, Allason lost the case, and was ordered to pay costs of around £200,000. In passing judgement the trial judge said Allason was "a profoundly dishonest man" and "one of the most dishonest witnesses I have ever seen". In September 2005, Allason was threatened with jail for contempt of court in relation to paying the damages from the 2001 case.
Read more about this topic: Rupert Allason
Famous quotes containing the words legal and/or actions:
“We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer.... Law cannot save us from ourselves.... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again.”
—Philip K. Howard, U.S. lawyer. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, pp. 186-87, Random House (1994)
“They are actions that a man might play,
But I have that within which passes show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)