Paper loses challenge to "no win, no fee" rule
21 Oct 05
House of Lords dismisses Daily Mirror challenge in Naomi Campbell privacy case
A national newspaper has lost its House of Lords bid to change the law relating to "no win, no fee" agreements.
The Daily Mirror had campaigned for the change after it received a £594,000 legal bill from model Naomi Campbell's lawyers, Schillings. Ms Campbell had successfully sued the paper for invasion of privacy after it published details of her attendance at Narcotics Anonymous meetings.
Ms Campbell had entered into a conditional fee agreement with Schillings, whose bill included a success fee of £280,000 - a 100% uplift - as compensation for the risk of losing.
Speaking for the newspaper at a hearing in May, Richard Spearman QC argued that the size of the fee violated freedom of speech under the European Convention of Human Rights and that Ms Campbell was a wealthy woman who could still have gone ahead with her case without such a fee agreement.
However, yesterday five law lords dismissed the claim that the size of the fee was an infringement of free speech. Lord Hoffmann said that conditional fee agreements had developed because powerful publishers had not been afraid of litigation. Finding ways of ensuring that the impecunious as well as the wealthy paid the price of failure in a defamation action was a challenge but it might require Parliament to intervene.