Green energy entrepreneur and Labour donor Dale Vince is set to receive damages from the publisher of the Daily Mail after the court of appeal ruled that his photograph was used in a misleading manner alongside a headline referring to a different individual. The ruling overturns a previous high court decision that had thrown out Vince's data protection claim against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL).
Background of the case
Vince, who has contributed more than £5 million to the Labour Party over several years, initiated legal action against ANL concerning an article published in June 2023. The article was headlined 'Labour repays £100,000 to sex pest donor'. Although the headline referred to a different donor, Davide Serra, Vince's photograph accompanied the article. The images depicted Vince holding a Just Stop Oil banner.
In 2002, an employment tribunal found that Serra had made sexist comments to a female colleague, constituting unlawful harassment related to sex. Labour had repaid money to Serra, which was the subject of the headline.
Publication details
Vince's photographs appeared in the print edition of the Daily Mail, where the headline mentioned a 'sex harassment' donor, and on the Mail+ app. Online versions of the article were updated with photographs of Serra 47 minutes after publication, but the print edition retained Vince's images.
Vince argued that the article unfairly used his personal data and would lead many readers to believe that he was the individual accused of sexual harassment. Throughout the legal proceedings, ANL's lawyers contended that the full context of the article and photographs was clear to anyone who read the entire headline and story, as Serra was identified as the subject early in the piece.
Court of appeal ruling
The high court initially dismissed Vince's data protection claim in June 2024. However, this decision was overturned by three court of appeal judges, led by Sir Geoffrey Vos. In a 20-page ruling, Vos stated that Vince was seeking redress for 'an obvious injustice perpetrated by a wrongdoer who was taking every possible legal point against him'.
Vos noted that ANL had 'failed to take care not to publish misleading information and images in the articles', as required by the editors' code of practice adopted by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), of which ANL is a member. He added: 'The information in the headline juxtaposed next to the images of Mr Vince would have misled many casual readers into thinking that Mr Vince was the “sex harassment donor” referred to in the headline.' Vos concluded that ANL had 'no real prospect' of defending Vince's damages claim.
Vince's response
Reacting to the ruling, Vince highlighted what he sees as a fundamental flaw in libel law. 'The fallacy at the heart of libel law is the assumption that people read both headlines and articles in full,' he said. 'We all know this is not true; we all scan headlines and think we know what the story is.'
He continued: 'But that element of libel law has stood for over three decades, while the internet grew, social media came into the world, and our attention spans famously shrank. Libel law in our country is not fit for purpose. It needs updating for the modern era.'
ANL declined to comment on the ruling.
