Wall Street Journal loses libel appeal (UK)

[Stockholm]

Julia Day
Thursday February 3, 2005

The Wall Street Journal today failed in its high court bid to reverse a libel action it lost last year, leading its lawyer to call the so-called Reynolds defence a flawed "damp squib".

Lord Phillips upheld an earlier judgment awarding £30,000 in libel damages to Saudi businessman Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel, whom the paper had wrongly linked to terrorist organisations.

The proceedings related to an article headlined "Saudi officials monitor certain bank accounts", which appeared in February 2002 and wrongly alleged that Mr Jameel was one of several high profile Saudis whose businesses were being monitored at the request of US regulators.

The paper had hoped to argue that it had behaved responsibly in publishing the article, but it did not, during the libel action, claim the story was true.

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http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1405177,00.html?gusrc=ticker-103704