22 October 2025
DEFAMATION: Jamie Redknapp apologises to Lord Sugar for remark about Tottenham Hotspur
Football pundit Jamie Redknapp has made an on-air apology to Lord Alan Sugar for incorrectly stating that the football club, Tottenham Hotspur, was left in “a complete mess” when Lord Sugar departed as chairman in 2001.
Shortly after the comment was broadcast, Lord Sugar posted on X that Redknapp and Sky would be hearing from his lawyers.
Three weeks later, Redknapp made clear on air that Lord Sugar had in fact stabilised the football club and invested heavily during his time as chairman. He also apologised to Lord Sugar and his family for any misunderstanding and for any distress caused and said he was happy to set the record straight.
Lord Sugar then took to X again, posting a clip of the apology and stating that by way of further apology a donation of £10,000 had been made to Great Ormond Street Hospital.
The dispute was widely covered in the media, in a largely light-hearted manner, but there are potentially serious implications for pundits and broadcasters alike if other wealthy individuals decide to follow suit when critical statements are broadcast or reported about them.
Football pundits are employed and continue to be employed to give their robust and often outspoken views on all things football and frequently criticise players, referees, managers and chairmen – apparently, until now, without legal consequences.
In defamation law there is wide scope for pundits to express their honest opinions, however controversial they may be, but there are certain conditions that need to be met in order to successfully run an ‘honest opinion’ defence to a defamation claim:
it has to be a statement of opinion (as opposed to fact);
the statement must indicate the basis of the opinion i.e. the context or facts upon which it is based; and
it must be an opinion that an honest person could have held on the basis of any fact that existed at the time the statement was published.
DEFAMATION (US): Netflix sued for copyright infringement by YouTube content creator
A YouTuber who interviewed a man accused of committing the Gilgo Beach murders is suing Netflix for using extracts of his interview in its 2025 series ‘Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer’.
Antoine Amira claims the streamer infringed his copyright by using parts of his 2022 interview with architect Rex Heuermann without his permission. He is seeking more than $120,000 in damages.
The Gilgo Beach murders are a series of killings that took place in Long Island, New York, between 1993 and 2010. Heuermann has been charged over seven of the killings but denies all wrongdoing.
Amira claims his interview with Heuermann is the only known recording in which the architect talks about his life and work and numerous networks and production companies have sought to license it.
He alleges that Netflix and Archer Gray Productions and Story Syndicate, the production companies that made the series, “practically parade nearly a full minute” of the interview “all over” the series.
In addition to damages, Amira is asking the United States District Court in the Southern District of New York to award him any profits made by the defendants as a result of their use of the footage.
He is also asking the Court to order the defendants to recall the series, deliver up any copies of material containing the footage for destruction and refrain from using the footage again in the future.
As with the defence of fair dealing in the UK, the doctrine of fair use in the USA can enable programme makers to use material without a licence and without payment in certain circumstances.
zoom-in plans to follow the case over the coming months to see whether the Court decides that the defendants’ use of Amira’s footage in the series constituted fair use on this occasion.
DEFAMATION (SOUTH KOREA) – Court rules that virtual K-Pop bank Plave has been defamed
A South Korean court has reportedly ruled that online insults directed at K-pop band, Plave, can be considered to be defamatory.
The case is unusual because Plave and its members do not technically exist. The band members are virtual characters and their performances and chats with fans are animated through motion-capture technology of real, anonymous performers.
Can avatars sue for defamation?
The defendant claimed that the comments were directed at the virtual characters and not the real performers behind them. However, the court said that if an avatar was widely recognised to represent someone real, then attacks on the avatar also extended to the real person. In this case the court decided that the identities of the real performers had become information readily available to the masses.
In the UK, defamation law is designed to protect the reputation of living individuals. So avatars themselves could not bring a successful claim in the UK, but if the identity of real performers behind avatars is well known, the identifiable real performers could potentially bring such a defamation claim in the UK.
Were the words defamatory?
Some of the words used by the online poster have been reported to be that the people behind the avatars could be “ugly in real life”, they have a “typical Korean man vibe”, the person behind one of the avatars is “not tall or handsome”, has a “rotten body” and has to “hide behind” his avatar. There were also various profanities directed at the band.
The claimants said the comments had caused them emotional distress and each of the real performers was awarded damages of 100,000 won – equivalent to approximately £53 – Plave are reportedly appealing the level of damages awarded.
In the UK, mere vulgar abuse is not sufficient to succeed in a defamation claim, there must be a likelihood of serious reputational harm being caused by the words.
Would it be defamatory in the UK to call someone ugly?
This is a question that was raised in the case of Berkoff v Burchill in 1996. Julie Burchill, a journalist and film critic, referred to the actor Steven Berkoff as being “notoriously hideous-looking” and “only marginally better-looking than the creature in Frankenstein”. Steven Berkoff sued for defamation.
The Court of Appeal considered the question and on a majority did not strike out the claim on the basis that it could cause Mr Berkoff to be subject to ridicule, contempt or exclusion. The case did not ultimately proceed to trial, so there was no definitive judgment on this question.
However, it did produce an entertaining judgment from the one Court of Appeal judge, Lord Justice Millett, who did not agree that the case should be permitted to proceed to jury trial. It included:
Many a true word is spoken in jest. Many a false one too. But chaff and banter are not defamatory, and even serious imputations are not actionable if no one would take them to be meant seriously … The question then is: is it defamatory to say of a man that he is "hideously ugly"?
Mr. Berkoff is a director, actor and writer. Physical beauty is not a qualification for a director or writer. Mr. Berkoff does not plead that he plays romantic leads or that the words complained of impugn his professional ability. In any case, I do not think that it can be defamatory to say of an actor that he is unsuitable to play particular roles.
How then can the words complained of injure Mr. Berkoff's reputation? They are an attack on his appearance, not on his reputation.
The cases in which words have been held to be defamatory because they would cause the plaintiff to be shunned or avoided, or "cut off from society", have hitherto been confined to allegations that he suffers from leprosy or the plague or the itch or is noisesome and smelly … an allegation of ugliness is not of that character.
I have no doubt that the words complained of were intended to ridicule Mr. Berkoff, but I do not think that they made him look ridiculous or lowered his reputation in the eyes of ordinary people.
The line between mockery and defamation may sometimes be difficult to draw. … I am not persuaded that the present case could properly be put on the wrong side of the line. A decision that it is an actionable wrong to describe a man as "hideously ugly" would be an unwarranted restriction on free speech. And if a bald statement to this effect would not be capable of being defamatory, I do not see how a humorously exaggerated observation to the like effect could be. People must be allowed to poke fun at one another without fear of litigation.
It is one thing to ridicule a man; it is another to expose him to ridicule. Miss Burchill made a cheap joke at Mr. Berkoff's expense; she may thereby have demeaned herself, but I do not believe that she defamed Mr. Berkoff.
If I have appeared to treat Mr. Berkoff's claim with unjudicial levity it is because I find it impossible to take it seriously. I remain of the opinion that the proceedings are as frivolous as Miss Burchill's article. The time of the Court ought not to be taken up with either of them. I would dismiss the Action.
The full Court of Appeal judgment is: Berkoff v Burchill & Anor [1996] EWCA Civ 564 (31st July, 1996)
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