Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly

Professor Francis D Rose

Document

JURISDICTIONAL DISCRETION IN DEFAMATION ON THE INTERNET

King v. Lewis

Although, as the court in King v. Lewis 1 lamented, there is too ‘‘much learning’’ about the manner of exercise of the forum (non) conveniens discretion, the case is important and deserves a comment. In a field which is particularly vulnerable to creating multiplicity of jurisdictions—defamation on the internet—it has made a valuable contribution to the learning on private international law.

King v. Lewis involved a defamation action brought in an English court by an American claimant against what were, in essence, American defendants. Don King (the claimant), a Florida resident, was a boxing promoter well known throughout the world, especially in the US and the UK. He managed many famous boxers, including Lennox Lewis (the first defendant), a British boxer residing in New York. Lewis’ promotion company, Lion Promotions LLC (the second defendant), was based in Nevada. Judd Burstein (the third defendant) was a New York lawyer that acted for Lewis and Lion. While litigation involving King and Lewis was pending in New York, Burstein posted a piece on the fightnews.com website, stating, among other things, that King had made anti-semitic remarks. Then an article was posted on the boxingtalk.com website, recording the transcript of an interview in which Burstein again complained about anti-semitic remarks by King. Both websites were hosted on servers based in California. The defendants contested the English court’s exercise of jurisdiction. Their view of the dispute was that it was entirely a US case from first to last, so they were understandably aggrieved at being sued in England.

Limiting claim to English defamation

Rather than sue in the US, King sought to sue the defendants in an English court. He confined his claims to damage to his reputation in England by virtue of the English publication of the statements. This seems to be a popular practice for foreign litigants wishing to have their case determined according to English defamation law, sometimes to the dismay of English courts, who regard it as forum shopping.2 Conveniently for claimants, English law treats each publication as a separate tort. This allows a foreign

1. King v. Lewis [2004] EWCA Civ 1329, [36].

2. See Berezovsky v. Michaels [2000] 1 WLR 1004, 1023–1024, per Lord Hoffmann.

129

The rest of this document is only available to i-law.com online subscribers.

If you are already a subscriber, click Log In button.