Dale Vince's High Court claim against Daily Mail publisher thrown out
Mr Vince brought legal action against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) over an article headlined 'Labour repays £100,000 to sex pest donor', published in June 2023.
The story reported that the Labour Party was handing back money to donor Davide Serra with a picture showing Mr Vince holding a Just Stop Oil banner.
This picture, published in print and on The Mail+ app, was changed to one of Mr Serra online 47 minutes after publication, while the original picture of Mr Vince remained in the print version.
An employment tribunal in 2022 heard Mr Serra had made sexist comments to a female colleague which were found to amount to unlawful harassment related to sex.
Mr Vince claimed ANL misused his personal data and that the publication of his photograph with this story would lead readers to believe he had been accused of sexual harassment.
ANL had defended the claim, with its lawyers previously telling the High Court in London that it was an abuse of process and a 'resurrection' of a libel claim that was dismissed last year.
In a judgment on Monday, a High Court judge threw out the data protection claim.
Mr Justice Swift said: 'There is no real prospect that Mr Vince will succeed on his claim.
'As in the defamation proceedings, it is accepted that on reading the text of the article published in Mail+ and the Daily Mail any ordinary reader would very quickly realise that Mr Vince was not being accused of sexual harassment.
'Considered on this basis the personal data relating to Mr Vince was processed fairly.'
He said there was 'every reason' why the data protection claim should have been heard with the defamation claim last year.
'Both claims arose out of the same event, the publication of the article in Mail+ and the Daily Mail,' he added.
'Both claims rely on the same factual circumstances, namely the juxtaposition of the headline, photographs and caption, and the contention that the combination of the headline and the photograph created the misleading impression that Mr Vince had been accused of sexual harassment.'
Following the decision, Mr Vince said he planned to appeal.
He said: 'What we're dealing with here is a media law that predates the internet. Think about that. Essentially, UK law says that people read entire articles and not just headlines.
'We all know this is untrue, the internet has changed everything, modern attention spans are famously small and shrinking, dwell times on articles are measured in seconds and media organisations have an abundance of data on this.'
He continued: 'The judge said if you read the whole story, you'd realise the headline was not about me, begging the question why was my face highlighted in the articles perhaps.
'But more importantly, people don't read entire articles, the law assumes it – but does so wrongly, against all data and against common sense.'
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