Parish councillor receives £20,000 libel bill after accusing clerk of giving him ‘the finger'

Telegraph

04-03-2025

A parish councillor has been handed a £20,000 libel bill after he accused the village clerk of giving him 'the finger' during a council meeting.
Councillor Andrew Peake, 60, was sued by Dr James Miller, the clerk of Fleggburgh parish council in Norfolk, after a campaign of online abuse.
Mr Peake accused Dr Miller of being a 'dishonest, scheming, devious and threatening liar', the High Court was told.
Mr Peake insisted claims he made on his 'Fleggburgh Eye' Facebook page about Dr Miller – a Cambridge-educated academic – were truthful, accusing him among other things of secretly giving him 'the finger' during a council meeting.
The contentious 'finger'
He has now been ordered to pay £20,000 in libel damages to Dr Miller after Judge Richard Parkes KC found he had not proved any of his defamatory online statements were true.
On the contentious 'finger', the judge said it was about 'interpretation of his hand movements', with Dr Miller's elbow on the table and his finger projecting upwards next to his face.
The judge went on to say he could not find on the balance of probabilities that an 'offensive gesture' was made.
Giving judgment following a High Court trial, Judge Parkes said the village strife had been 'stoked by the ill-advised use of social media'.
Dr Miller, who lives in nearby Freethorpe, was clerk to the council from February 2019 to September 2021, while Mr Peake, an engineer, was a councillor until he resigned in April 2021.
Fleggburgh resident Mr Peake had been elected in 2017, with a mission to end what he saw as the 'obvious secret decision making' at the council by making it more open and accountable.
He also ran a Facebook page, initially named 'Andrew Peake of Fleggburgh' but later becoming 'Fleggburgh Eye', where much of the strife was made public.
'The posts complained of repeated very similar allegations over a nine-month period,' said the judge. 'They generally repeated the same allegations that Dr Miller, as clerk to Fleggburgh Parish Council, was dishonest, incompetent and threatening.'
He found that the campaign of posts were to the effect that Dr Miller was a 'fraudulent, dishonest and incompetent clerk' who had taken money for work he did not in fact carry out.
'Threatening, scheming, dishonest, devious liar'
Dr Miller said he was accused of repeatedly lying about having written the council's social media policy and of generally being a 'threatening, scheming, dishonest, devious liar.'
When sued for defamation, Mr Peake claimed the defence of 'truth' in relation to his online postings.
Ruling on the case, Judge Parkes said: 'I have seen a photograph of the alleged gesture, which shows Dr Miller with his left elbow on a table and his left hand by his face, with the second finger projecting slightly forwards.
'I do not know where Mr Peake was in relation to Dr Miller. Dr Miller denies having intended any offensive gesture, which he said would have been highly unprofessional, not to mention unwise, given that Mr Peake was filming him.
'My conclusion is that no offensive gesture was made, or at least not intentionally, even if Mr Peake believed it to have been.'
'Very strong personal dislike'
He said Mr Peake was 'plainly consumed with a very strong personal dislike of Dr Miller, which is evident in his posts'.
The judge continued: 'To him any false statement by Dr Miller was a lie; any statement capable of being regarded as a threat made him a threatening person; any error showed rank incompetence.
'As Mr Peake told me, he is on the autistic spectrum, and he tends to see issues in polarised terms of black and white.
'In my judgment, that difficulty has led him to make accusations which are not justified by the evidence which he regards as proving them.'