What's an icon of rid expression to do when his moral character is trashed in print?
Salman Rushdie forced his former bodyguard to excuse in homage Tuesday over a tell-all book about guarding the author wHO was threatened with end following the publication of "The Satanic Verses."
Rushdie north Korean won without seeking damages or resorting to a mussy, drawn out libel visitation, something his lawyers aforesaid could set a common law for celebrities suing in Britain's plaintiff friendly environment.
"Instead of just going for megabucks, you just go to court to determine what's the truth and what's not," Rushdie aforesaid of his strategy after a sense of hearing at Britain's High Court.
Rushdie sued his former bodyguard Ronald Evans for allegations made in his volume "On Her Majesty's Service," which, among other things, accused Rushdie of stressful to earnings from the Iranian-backed death threat he received afterward the liberation of "The Satanic Verses" in 1988.
The 61-year-old writer said he was sensitive to free speech issues but that "there is a straightforward difference between the argument of view and the perpetration of untruth."
"Had he written a novel, thither would have been no case," he said before the hearing. "He would have had the demurrer of his imagination."
Rushdie's strategy of demanding an apology - without seeking a financial prize - is unusual for a celebrity-driven libel case in Britain, where plaintiff-friendly laws boost the rich and renowned to seek financial redress for attacks on their reputation.
Libel laws in the United States, for exercise, require somebody to prove that an article was both sour and promulgated maliciously, whereas British law of nature places the burden of proof on the publisher.
That has made it an attractive point for so-called "libel tourists," people like Saudi billionaire Khalid Bin Mahfouz, wHO sued American writer Rachel Ehrenfeld in London over her rule book on terrorist financing, or U.S. actress Kate Hudson, who north Korean won an apologia from the National Enquirer's British version over a story alleging she was too thin.
Rushdie's approach tries to "sweep through the lie for all time with a court-ordered declaration of falsity" without throttling give up speech by putting writers and publishers through expensive trials and heavy redress, Rushdie's attorney Geoffrey Robertson said in a statement.
The strategy is innovative but unlikely to be widely followed, said Caroline Keen, a partner of Wiggin LLP, a London law firm that specializes in media law.
"It's a identical commendable approach, but I have a very cynical view of human nature," Keen aforesaid, adding that traditional libel suits, with the promise of large tax-free payouts, still have a sizeable future in Britain.
"I suspect that this (strategy) volition be largely confined to people wHO are in the media themselves, or don't want to be seen as 'greedy' for seeking amends, or where the issues of fact are . . . black-and-white," she said.
At the hearing, Justice Nigel Teare delivered a "resolution of falsity" - officially ruling that the allegations made against Rushdie were untrue. Evans, his ghost Douglas Thompson, and his publisher John Blake Publishing Ltd. agreed to pes Rushdie's legal bill, just he did not seek any further compensation.
The universal controversy over "The Satanic Verses," which outraged many Muslims over its allegedly blasphemous depicted object, turned the Booker Prize-winning writer into one of the most prominent proponents of relinquish expression.
It too made him a marked man, and when Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini demanded his capital punishment in 1989, he went into hiding and was offered a police guard - which at unitary point included Evans.
There was "clearly" an element of personal betrayal to the case, Rushdie said, in front adding that the irreverence of his privacy was not the point.
"It is a percentage point, but the reason for bringing these actions was that these things were lies," he said.
Diana Colbert, a representative for John Blake Publishing, said in an email that Evans's book would still go out, albeit "with some amendments," in early September. She declined to go into farther detail, citing legal reasons.
Evans did not return emails seeking input.
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