INFORMATION

This website uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some of these cookies are essential to make our site work and others help us to improve by giving us some insight into how the site is being used.

For further information, see our Privacy Policy.

Continuing to use this website is acceptance of these cookies.

We are not accepting any new registrations.

Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass others

Message
Author
Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#21 Post by Maria Mac » March 16th, 2015, 4:20 pm


User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#22 Post by Alan H » March 16th, 2015, 4:32 pm

Ooooh!
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

kbell
Posts: 1146
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 11:27 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#23 Post by kbell » March 16th, 2015, 11:03 pm

Athena posted: https://inforrm.files.wordpress.com/201 ... 2015-1.pdf

:puzzled: Could you summarise in a few sentences? Or even paragraphs?
Kathryn

Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#24 Post by Maria Mac » March 17th, 2015, 12:18 pm

Will do when I've got a moment. It's most illuminating.

User avatar
animist
Posts: 6522
Joined: July 30th, 2010, 11:36 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#25 Post by animist » March 18th, 2015, 7:19 am

Athena wrote:Will do when I've got a moment. It's most illuminating.
completely fascinating. Let's hope they waste their money - whether they'll learn any lesson is doubtful

Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#26 Post by Maria Mac » March 18th, 2015, 12:21 pm

I shudder to think what their costs might be if they lose. It is baffling that a family with dependent children would risk huge financial loss because of a blog post nobody reads and a couple of long forgotten-tweets. (I link to that blog post in my first post on this thread).

Anyway, for the benefit of anyone who can't be bothered to read the document:

Angel has not made any secret of the fact that she and Steve are involved in some kind of legal action. In a previous post, I c&p their appeal for help in funding this action.

What they have not made clear is exactly what this action is about. Their appeal for money mentions their successful battle against a school in New Zealand years ago over the bullying of Angel's daughter. But it then categorically claims that Angel and Steve are “currently fighting a court case against people who don't want this information shared.” This is an extraordinary claim – as if anyone actually cares about their conflict with the school and whether they share it or not. They have a website and twitter account called ‘Steinermentary’ where they tell the story ad nauseum and none of the people they target has objected to it or tried to get it taken down. Yet whenever she has mentioned the court case publicly, she has presented it in terms of something she is “forced” to do while being secretive about what exactly she is doing.

In recent weeks Angel has maintained this...let’s call it ‘version’ with a number of tweets:

https://twitter.com/Amazonnewsmedia/sta ... 5390013440
it's hard on the kids to see that we have to fight to defend what they already rightfully earned but hey ho eternal vigilance
https://twitter.com/Amazonnewsmedia/sta ... 1013085184
it never ends - back in court defending our WB success from concerted attack on 16th March
(WB=whistle-blowing)

Unbelievable to have to do this at all, but there’s no other way

extraordinary to be having to do this - a sad comment on “open debate”
https://twitter.com/Amazonnewsmedia/sta ... 0479767552
we are forced back to a UK court to defend a #HumanRights settlement
https://twitter.com/Amazonnewsmedia/sta ... 5749153792
Our #HumanRights WB V successful -> practical agency for #bullying. Misrepresented so badly -> forced back to Court!
And finally:
https://twitter.com/Amazonnewsmedia/sta ... 6083467264
Good #freespeech morning

Day 1 of 5 day defamation case trial in the High Court in Swansea

Thanks for good wishes

May justice prevail!
Free speech? In what sense can she conceivably think she is fighting for free speech? :puzzled:

From this document, which was placed in the public domain this week, we finally learn something of the truth. Here it is again for easy reference:

https://inforrm.files.wordpress.com/201 ... 2015-1.pdf

The trial is for defamation. The claimants are Angel Garden and Steve Paris. The Defendants are Andy Lewis and MB

As I understand it - and I have to read every paragraph at least twice - the action originally included some claims against the Defendants for harassment (oh, the irony!) and a bunch of other stuff, I know not what. These were abandoned in March last year. In the review, the judge considers an application made by the claimants in January of this year, to have the claims of harassment reinstated. Para 29 of the document says, “both in a written statement and to me in court by Ms. Garden it has been said that the reason for withdrawal of the harassment claim in March 2014 was the lack of concrete evidence, whereas now she says there is a demonstration of harassment.”

Notably, it seems that the Claimants had legal representation at the time the harassment claims were abandoned (together with all claims against a third defendant, MB’s husband – no clue as to what they were) but, by the time they made the application to have them reinstated, their lawyer(s) had gone and they were representing themselves. One can only speculate as to why.

I see that Angel tweeted that their application to reinstate the harassment claims was refused because it was “too late, too complex”. The judge agrees that it was extremely late and would also have necessitated extending the trial at great cost, etc. More importantly he refers to case law to point out that “conduct could not be actionable for the purposes of the Protection From Harassment Act 1996 unless it was of a gravity which would count as criminal under section 2 of that act.” (My bold) On this point he concludes that “it is open to the severest doubt whether the matters of which the Claimants complained, and which may quite properly be the subject of a claim in defamation, would amount to conduct on the part of the Defendants which meets the criminal standard for a charge of harassment as a criminal offence.”

The application to amend was refused; thus, AL and MB are in court defending a defamation charge relating to his one blog post about them, a couple of tweets and one retweet.

So there you have the summary in a few(ish) paragraphs. However, there is more to say about the contents of that document including what is the so-called evidence for harassment by the Defendants claimed by Angel and what is the defamation charge that Andy and MB are having to spend five days in court defending? I’ll deal with that in my next post.

Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#27 Post by Maria Mac » March 18th, 2015, 5:00 pm

OK, on the extraordinary and ironic allegation of harassment, we learn from paras 40-43 that MB is accused by Angel of
“a wideranging campaign of harassment and defamation", "Including substantial covert and proxy harassment of the Claimants"
"Hiding the personal origins of this campaign in covert misrepresentations”.
“Attacking their work ethics”
“Attacking, [Angel's] disability” (she has a bad foot and describes herself as 'walking-impaired')
“encouraging proxies to do the same without allowing the Claimants any right of reply”.

These are mind-blowing accusations and I am 100% certain that none of them are true. When they mention proxies, I believe they are talking about me and a few other people who have challenged Angel and Steve’s behaviour online. They think MB pulls our strings. In fact, I didn’t even know about their conflict with MB when I got involved. I had stumbled upon a few tweets of Angel directed at Andy Lewis and a few other tweets about him she directed at others (now that’s what I call harassment), followed a few links and was appalled at what I saw as straightforward bullying by Angel and Steve, so I jumped in with both feet. I knew Andy slightly and admired his blog greatly but as for MB, I’d been introduced to her briefly in the foyer of a theatre years previously, had never had any kind of conversation with her apart from the exchange of a few tweets, knew nothing about her at all until I started reading more of Angel’s website.

Anyway, as I said in the previous post, these allegations of harassment had been abandoned a year ago, while the Claimants had the services of a solicitor, presumably for advice and representation. The judge states Angel told him the allegations were abandoned “because of the lack of concrete evidence, whereas now she says there is a demonstration of harassment.” (Paragraph 29)

But it seems that these allegations were not particularised in the Claimants application to have them reinstated. To quote what the judge says in para 40, “The different and individual instances would, in accordance with the guidance which I have cited, need to be given with precision before amendment could be permitted”. On the allegation of proxy harassment, “The question would arise by which third parties, on what dates and the subject of what actions, not all of which need to be individually actionable as harassment but which would need to be shown individually for the Defendants to meet the case of harassment.” On the allegation of hiding the personal origins of the campaign of misrepresentation, “Which? When? In what circumstances?”

One senses the judge getting a little frustrated here, poor guy. He points out no details are given of the other allegations either. None of this surprises me in the least. The whole history of Angel and Steve’s campaign of harassment against both targets has been one of sweeping but unsupported allegations - they have no more understanding of what is meant by ‘evidence’ than what is meant by ‘skepticism’ or ‘humanism’ and why we demand robust evidence when extraordinary claims are made.

More later.

User avatar
Dave B
Posts: 17809
Joined: May 17th, 2010, 9:15 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#28 Post by Dave B » March 18th, 2015, 5:52 pm

These two are becoming a bit of a bette noir for you it seems, Athena!

:wink:
"Look forward; yesterday was a lesson, if you did not learn from it you wasted it."
Me, 2015

Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#29 Post by Maria Mac » March 18th, 2015, 5:56 pm

Good grief - that's the understatement of the decade.

Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#30 Post by Maria Mac » March 18th, 2015, 7:49 pm

Right, the final bit worth mentioning from the document takes us back to the reason the conflict with Andy started in the first place i.e. whether they have the right to comment on his blog. Unbelievably, it seems the Claimants invoke Article 10 of the Human Rights Act to argue that they do. The judge responds with what should be patently obvious to all rational-minded people. I’ll c&p this bit in full - Para 43 (iv):
(iv) "Blocking the Claimants from any democratic participation on shared interests no matter how relevant their input so far." Doubtless the Defendants can perfectly well identify Article 10 rights of their own, and the fact that there is not, (unless by some prior contractual undertaking or relationship between the parties, such as to an equitable relationship of trust such as requires them to give a voice) an obligation in law by somebody who publishes a blog or a website to accept and publish whatever a correspondent may seek to place on the blog, and they are entitled to say, "No, publish elsewhere". That could be dealt with in a trial, but where it says "and publishing rumour and hearsay but not facts which they could reasonably expected to know” (all this in “(iv)"), one would at the least first require individually particularised details.
So, now all that’s left of their case against Andy Lewis is alleged defamation via his one blogpost and two tweets. I don’t know what these tweets, which date back to May 2013, said but I’ll wager they were nothing compared to the repeated accusations Angel has tweeted about him over the past few years, which include censorship, hypocrisy, muckreads, corruption, being "contemptuous of human rights", defaming, manipulating and deceiving, and "sending his distortion trolls out". She can certainly dish it out....

And all she has against MB is the republishing of Andy’s blogpost (I wasn’t aware MB had done this and don’t know where she did it) and one tweet. The tweet I do know about because it was actually not MB’s own work but a retweet of something I said about Angel and Steve in November 2012. Seriously...they are trying to get her for repeating something I said on twitter even though they never threatened or tried to sue me for it. I won’t link to the tweet for legal reasons, obviously, but I’ll take this opportunity to say that I stand by what I said in it and if they had come after me for it, as they should have done, I wouldn’t have just bent over and paid up either.

kbell
Posts: 1146
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 11:27 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#31 Post by kbell » March 18th, 2015, 8:13 pm

Thanks for all that. For once, I'm speechless. :sad2:
Kathryn

Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#32 Post by Maria Mac » March 18th, 2015, 10:23 pm

I forgot to mention that around the time of the pre-trial review, I was contacted by a freelance journalist called Brian Morgan - from South Wales, funnily enough - who asked me if I could tell him anything about a defamation case involving two people in Swansea. I asked him why he was asking me and he responded that he'd had an email "from people involved in the case" and that a google search brought me up. I believe it must have been Angel who contacted him in expectation of sympathetic coverage.

kbell
Posts: 1146
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 11:27 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#33 Post by kbell » March 18th, 2015, 11:08 pm

From what's come to light so far, I don't imagine they'll get it. I've now read the whole document and one of several things I don't get is how the claimants got hold of the defendants private emails which they said contained the 'concrete evidence' of harassment, even though the judge disagreed?
Kathryn

User avatar
Tetenterre
Posts: 3244
Joined: March 13th, 2011, 11:36 am

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#34 Post by Tetenterre » March 19th, 2015, 11:47 am

Bloody hell! Good outcome would be if it got thrown out, with the judge awarding the defendants' costs against the claimants. Never can tell with defamation trials, though.
Steve

Quantum Theory: The branch of science with which people who know absolutely sod all about quantum theory can explain anything.

Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#35 Post by Maria Mac » March 19th, 2015, 11:58 am

kbell wrote:From what's come to light so far, I don't imagine they'll get it. I've now read the whole document and one of several things I don't get is how the claimants got hold of the defendants private emails which they said contained the 'concrete evidence' of harassment, even though the judge disagreed?
Well it seems (para 19) the Defendants were ordered to disclose any private communications that might be relevant to the case and that there were "a very considerable number of communications brought to light on disclosure, many of them private between the Defendants but some to third parties".

Para 27 is interesting: "an essential thread of the Claimants’ claim in defamation is that the statements complained of have been such as not merely to be wounding to the reputation of the Claimants, but such as to be likely to lower their reputation and the esteem which they might otherwise enjoy in the eyes of others", etc etc and in para 28 the judge summarises their argument thus: "because of the antipathy which is shown in the private communications of the two Defendants one to another and the strong expressions of opinion by the Defendants to others third parties this shows that what they felt instinctively, (namely that they were shunned by others because of something which had permeated from the Defendants), is now demonstrated to be true"

Translation: The Defendants have said defamatory things about us in private, which are damaging to us.

Talk about getting things arse-backwards. (Edited to remove what in hindsight is a bit of a rant on my part.)

Sorry for lengthy replies but I find this kind of stuff fascinating. I loved doing the law part of my degree.

kbell
Posts: 1146
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 11:27 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#36 Post by kbell » March 19th, 2015, 10:01 pm

Is the trial still going on? I can't imagine what's taking all this time.
Kathryn

User avatar
animist
Posts: 6522
Joined: July 30th, 2010, 11:36 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#37 Post by animist » March 20th, 2015, 7:43 am

Athena wrote:Well it seems (para 19) the Defendants were ordered to disclose any private communications that might be relevant to the case and that there were "a very considerable number of communications brought to light on disclosure, many of them private between the Defendants but some to third parties".

Para 27 is interesting: "an essential thread of the Claimants’ claim in defamation is that the statements complained of have been such as not merely to be wounding to the reputation of the Claimants, but such as to be likely to lower their reputation and the esteem which they might otherwise enjoy in the eyes of others", etc etc and in para 28 the judge summarises their argument thus: "because of the antipathy which is shown in the private communications of the two Defendants one to another and the strong expressions of opinion by the Defendants to others third parties this shows that what they felt instinctively, (namely that they were shunned by others because of something which had permeated from the Defendants), is now demonstrated to be true"

Translation: The Defendants have said defamatory things about us in private, which are damaging to us.
what about private communications between the claimants being made public? Sauce for the goose and so on. And I don't really see how private communications between two people who are already hostile to two other people can be held to be damaging the latters' reputations. Crazy and fascinating

Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#38 Post by Maria Mac » March 20th, 2015, 8:58 pm

I presume the Claimants also had to disclose but don't know for sure. (Edited to remove more ranting).

The trial will have finished today. I imagine it will be some time before the judgement is published.

User avatar
Sel
Posts: 811
Joined: January 3rd, 2011, 3:53 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#39 Post by Sel » March 21st, 2015, 1:32 pm

Fascinating reading, Athena. I read your legal posting and was amazed at how complicated it has become for so simple a situation. Why has the judge not turfed this case out to free the court for more significant cases?
"The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge." Bertrand Russell

Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#40 Post by Maria Mac » March 21st, 2015, 4:44 pm

Again, one can only speculate, Sel. The law moves in mysterious ways.

Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

Re: Angel Garden & Steve Paris still defame and harass other

#41 Post by Maria Mac » July 18th, 2015, 1:43 pm

I'm locking this thread and have started a new one on the judgment here.

Locked