Ex-footballer Joey Barton to pay £203k of Jeremy Vine's legal costs after libel case
Vine sued Barton for libel and harassment over several online posts, including one in which he falsely called the BBC Radio 2 presenter a 'big bike nonce' and a 'pedo defender' on X.
The pair settled the claim last year after Barton posted two apologies on the same social media platform and paid a total of £110,000 (€126,000) in damages to Vine, as well as his legal costs.
In an agreed statement read out at the High Court in October last year, barrister Gervase de Wilde, for Vine, said that the broadcaster 'was deeply alarmed, distressed and upset' by Barton's actions, which included a 'persistent and highly damaging campaign of defamation, harassment and misuse of private information'.
Today, a specialist costs court heard that Barton had agreed to pay £160,000 (€184,000) of Vine's costs from the main legal action.
Advertisement
Costs Judge Colum Leonard also ordered Barton to pay a further £43,172.30 (€49,000) arising from the negotiation of the £160,000 figure, meaning he will pay a total of £203,172.30 (€234,000) of Vine's costs following the legal action.
Lawyers for Vine told the High Court in May last year that Barton's posts amounted to a 'calculated and sustained attack'.
Barton, who played for teams including Manchester City, Newcastle United, Rangers, and French side Marseille during his career, also began using '#bikenonce' on X, which led to it trending on the platform.
After Mrs Justice Steyn ruled that some of the posts could defame Vine, Barton apologised to the journalist in June last year, stating that the allegations he made were 'untrue'.
He said that he would pay Vine £75,000 in damages, but solicitors for Vine later said Barton would pay a further £35,000 as part of a 'separate settlement' for claims published after legal action began.
De Wilde told the October hearing that Barton made four undertakings as part of the settlement, including not to harass Vine or encourage others to do so.
Vine said following that hearing that Barton 'needs to find himself a different hobby'.
The hearing today was told that Barton agreed to pay £160,000 of Vine's legal costs earlier this month, and that Vine was claiming around £60,000 in costs for negotiating that figure.
Suzanne Holmes, for Barton, said this was 'excessive' and 'disproportionate', and should be reduced.
Kevin Latham, representing Vine, said Barton had 'repeatedly failed to engage in proper negotiation' throughout proceedings and 'has to bear the consequences of that approach'.
Neither Barton nor Vine attended the hearing in London.
Written by Press Association and posted on TheJournal.ie
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Examiner
6 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Enoch Burke wins court appeal over disciplinary panel bias in dismissal case
Teacher Enoch Burke has won an appeal over the composition of a disciplinary panel set up to hear his appeal against his dismissal from Wilson's Hospital school. Mr Burke claimed a member of the three-person appeals panel, Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) general secretary Kieran Christie, was a 'promoter of transgenderism'. The appeals panel denied his claim. Ms Justice Mary Faherty, on behalf of the three-judge Court of Appeal, said with "a great deal of reluctance", she would grant an injunction to Mr Burke restraining the appeals panel, as presently constituted, from from holding a hearing. Mr Burke spent more than 500 days in prison for repeatedly disobeying High Court orders not to attend at Wilson's Hospital school in Co Westmeath, where he had been employed as a history and German teacher. When he was dismissed in 2023, he sought an appeal through the normal employment process but then brought a High Court challenge claiming appeals panel member, Mr Christie, was an activist for transgenderism within the ASTI and was personally or objectively biased. In December 2023, the High Court rejected his challenge, saying Mr Burke had not discharged the burden on him of establishing there was a fair question to be tried of a reasonable apprehension of bias. He appealed to the Court of Appeal and the panel opposed his appeal. On Friday, Ms Justice Faherty, for the Court of Appeal, said while accepting Mr Christie does not sit on the appeals panel in his capacity as general secretary of the ASTI, it must nevertheless be the case that Mr Christie's role in the ASTI, which has advised schools to use a transitioning student's preferred choice of pronoun, would be influential to the reasonable independent observer. In those circumstances, she could not agree with the High Court judge that there was not a fair question to be tried in relation to any issue of which it was claimed the ASTI had taken a position. She rejected Mr Burke's suggestion that if his objection to Mr Christie was well-founded, the objection must similarly be well-founded in relation to any other person nominated by the ASTI. The judge said there remained the question as to whether Mr Burke, with his history of contempt of court, "gets to pick and choose how and when he gets to invoke the court's protection and jurisdiction'. Mr Burke, apart from spending more than 500 days in prison over a number of periods, was also the subject of daily €700 and later €1,400 fines for every time he turned up at the school. Recently, the High Court made orders permitting the seizure of money to pay the fines from the bank account into which his school salary continued to be paid pending the Court of Appeal decision. Ms Justice Faherty said she considered his contempt no less egregious now than when he was before the High Court challenging the appeals panel. However, the distinguishing feature of the present case was the spectre of unfairness that will hover over the disciplinary appeal process if he has to face that body as presently constituted given he has made out a case of a reasonable apprehension of objective bias, she said. While it was normal for the loser in a case to pay the winner's costs, the court was "not in normal territory" here. The judge said there would be no costs order in Mr Burke's favour, save an order setting aside the costs order made against him in the High Court.
The Irish Sun
10 hours ago
- The Irish Sun
Crackdown on dodgy streaming as 100s of sites used for watching Hollywood films and sport for free BLOCKED for all Brits
HUNDREDS of illegal streaming sites have reportedly been blocked for viewers in the UK - and will be impossible to access even with a virtual private network (VPN). Piracy sites with servers in the UK were blocked earlier this month by Cloudflare, an internet infrastructure giant that acts as the middleman between websites and their visitors, Advertisement 2 The company uses geo-blocking, meaning the websites are simply unavailable in the UK Credit: Getty Those visiting the pirate streaming sites are expected to be met with Cloudflare's Error HTTP 451 - a block reserved for law-breaking websites only. Pirate streaming sites are already blocked by most internet service providers in the UK, such as BT, Virgin Media and Sky. People can sometimes evade restrictions by using a VPN - a service which keeps your internet activities private. But due to a recent legal order, Cloudflare has reportedly blocked access to up to 200 pirate streaming websites. Advertisement READ MORE ON STREAMING And this block cannot be bypassed with a simple VPN. Cloudflare is the company connecting web users to their desired websites - which means they can step in and block access at any time. The company uses geo-blocking, meaning the websites are simply unavailable in the UK. While the sites were barred earlier this month, the legal case calling for their blocking may have started as early as February 2024, TechRadar reported. Advertisement Most read in Tech A private law firm delivered a court order to Google, requesting to block 14 piracy sites, according to the Watch as police seize wads of cash from illegal streaming kingpin who made £1 million However, estimates that as many as 200 pirate domains could be affected. It forms part of a European crackdown on piracy. In May, French streaming giant Canal+ scored a legal victory when a landmark ruling ordered five popular VPN providers to block access to over 200 illegal sports streaming sites. Advertisement 2 Pirate streaming sites are already blocked by most internet service providers in the UK, such as BT, Virgin Media and Sky Credit: Getty
Irish Examiner
13 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Court to decide whether former dictator Assad can be stripped of immunity
France's highest court is ruling on Friday on whether it can strip the head of state immunity of Bashar Assad, the former leader of Syria now in exile in Russia, because of the brutality of the evidence in accusations against him collected by Syrian activists and European prosecutors. If the judges at the Cour de Cassation lift Assad's immunity, it could pave the way for his trial in absentia over the use of chemical weapons in Ghouta in 2013 and Douma in 2018, and set a precedent to allow the prosecution of other government leaders linked to atrocities, human rights activists and lawyers say. Assad has retained no lawyers for these charges and has denied he was behind the chemical attacks. A ruling against Assad would be 'a huge victory for the victims', said Mazen Darwish, president of the Syrian Centre for Media which collected evidence of war crimes. 500,000 The number of people believed to have died in Syria's 13-year civil war 'It's not only about Syrians, this will open the door for the victims from any country and this will be the first time that a domestic investigative judge has the right to issue an arrest warrant for a president during his rule.' He said the ruling could enable his group to legally go after regime members, like launching a money laundering case against former Syrian central bank governor and minister of economy, Adib Mayaleh, whose lawyers have argued he had immunity under international law. For over 50 years, Syria was ruled by Hafez Assad and then his son, Bashar. During the Arab Spring, rebellion broke out against their tyrannical rule in 2011 across the country of 23 million, igniting a brutal 13-year civil war that killed more than half a million people, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights. Millions more fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Europe. The Assad dynasty manipulated sectarian tensions to stay in power, a legacy driving renewed violence in Syria against minority groups despite promises that the country's new leaders will carve out a political future for Syria that includes and represents all its communities. The ruling stripping Assad's immunity could set a 'significant precedent' that 'could really set the stage for potentially for other cases in national jurisdictions that strike down immunities,' said Mariana Pena, a human rights lawyer at the Open Society Justice Initiative, which helped bring the case to court. As the International Criminal Court has issued arrests warrants for leaders accused of atrocities — like Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza, and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines — the French judges' ruling could empower the legal framework to prosecute not just deposed and exiled leaders but those currently in power. The Syrian government denied in 2013 that it was behind the Ghouta attack, an accusation the opposition rejected as Assad's forces were the only side in the brutal civil war to possess sarin. The United States subsequently threatened military retaliation, but Washington settled for a deal with Moscow for Assad to give up his chemical weapons' stockpile.
