Laurence Fox Lawsuit Gets Expensive

He may be attracting favourable publicity to his bid to become London Mayor - a campaign which will, with the certainty of night following day, develop not necessarily to his advantage - but former minor thesp Laurence Fox has already made one seriously unwise judgment, and a potentially ruinously expensive one.

Lozza could soon be a big loser

Last October, after Fox had gone off the end of the pier in no style at all at supermarket giant Sainsbury’s, when the latter had committed the heinous crime of advertising their commitment to being inclusive and non-discriminatory, he attracted severely adverse comment from a number of individuals. His response was to smear three of them as paedophiles. As a result, two of the three instructed lawyers.

As Zelo Street pointed out at the time, “After Simon Blake [of Stonewall] passed adverse comment on his actions, he snapped back ‘Pretty rich coming from a paedophile’. A Tweeter backing Black Lives Matter [Crystal from Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK] called him a snowflake as well as a racist, which resulted in the response ‘Says the paedophile’”.

Both those individuals then instructed Mark Lewis of Patron Law to pursue claims for defamation. Also, actress Nicola Thorp concluded that Fox was “unequivocally, publicly and undeniably a racist”, to which Lozza responded “Any company giving future employment to Nicola Thorpe [sic] or providing her with a platform does so with the complete knowledge that she is unequivocally, publicly and undeniably a paedophile”.

Moreover, Fox was warned by the Secret Barrister what the possible consequences of his accusations could involve. Worse, Fox’s smear of Blake and Crystal resulted in pile-ons from The Great Man’s followers, which will be an aggravating factor in any action. Now has come news not only that Ms Thorp has joined the action, but that the lawsuit has proceeded as far as the High Court, where the claims were filed earlier this month.

Mark Lewis - he won't lose this one

Why has it taken almost seven months for the lawsuits to proceed? Simples. Fox will almost certainly have been given the chance to make a suitable apology and pay a sum in damages, along with Lewis’ costs. That the actions have proceeded this far suggests he has declined to do that, or has declined to make the apology demanded of him.

If that is the case, Fox has been unwise in the extreme. Now that a defamation action has been filed at the High Court, the cost to him is likely to be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds, rather than a few tens. There’s no chance of his pretending he didn’t make the “paedophile” smears - they’ve all been screen shotted and saved.

And if Lewis, who is most likely taking the instructions on a no-win, no-fee basis, has succeeded in getting insurance cover for his latest trio of clients, that too will point to Fox having to pay up. And the later the paying up occurs, the more expensive it gets.

Laurence Fox is going to discover that his freedom of speech remains unconstrained. His problem is that he does not have freedom from its consequences. He might usefully consider what happened to pro-am motormouth Katie Hopkins. Say sorry, Lozza.

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