Walliams Case Shows How Legal Action Can Block Publications

William Randolph Hearst, the American press baron, is often credited with drawing a hard line between journalism and promotion: news, he said, is what someone, somewhere does not want published — everything else is advertising.

David Walliams did not want allegations about his supposed encounters with 30 young women appearing in print or on television. By Hearst’s yardstick, that made the material news.

Mr Walliams — a hugely successful children’s author, comedian and TV personality — had the resources to instruct some of London’s most senior lawyers in an effort to block publication by the Guardian and ITN.

Acting on his instructions, the legal team succeeded in delaying publication for six months.

Although lawyers say the dispute is not technically a SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation), the Walliams case has revived concern about how legal pressure can be used to keep information from the public.

And the problem extends well beyond newsrooms. Whistleblowers, politicians, NGOs, campaigners and private individuals who speak out have also been on the receiving end of SLAPPs — not only in Britain, but across Europe.

David Walliams denied the claims and unsuccessfully sought an injunction to prevent the publications

The court fight lands at a moment when Western public life is already being shaped by major cases and cultural reckonings — arriving the day after Russell Brand’s sentencing for rape and sexual assault and unfolding in an environment influenced by the Epstein files, Harvey Weinstein, the Me-Too movement, Donald Trump and E Jean Carroll, Stormy Daniels and others.

It is a period in which conduct once quietly tolerated from the wealthy and powerful is increasingly challenged — and where longstanding assumptions about what can be buried, ignored or managed are breaking down.

The legal system has become part of that shift, as have police forces. Yesterday, the Metropolitan Police said it had opened an investigation into “allegations of serious sexual offences” against David Walliams.

A jury found Russell Brand guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault

The arguments tested in Mr Walliams’ case are likely to return in new guises, as prominent law firms are retained to explore novel ways of restricting what the public learns about celebrities and businesses — ensuring attention stays on marketing and PR rather than reporting that meets Hearst’s definition of news.

In the Walliams litigation, the central new move was to rely on the European Convention on Human Rights, in particular the right to life, as a reason to stop the Guardian and ITN from publishing their investigation.

The two media organisations had spent three years assembling material and said they were highly confident in their reporting. In May, they set out their findings to Mr Walliams and asked for his response.

He rejected the allegations but also launched legal proceedings to prevent publication. Anonymity rules meant the public could not even be told that he was seeking to block the stories.

As a result, the matter appeared on the court list as PPT v Independent Television News and Another KB-2026-003646, and reporting was prohibited — until last week, when Mr Walliams lost, though even then he could not be identified while the time limit for lodging an appeal ran.

Only after that period expired at close of business on Monday were the Guardian and ITN able to name David Walliams as the person behind the injunction bid and publish their reports, despite weeks of social-media speculation ahead of the ruling. Such actions are easier to pursue against traditional media with a clear, bricks-and-mortar presence.

At the core of Mr Walliams’ case was his denial of the allegations and his claim that he could not withstand the publicity publication would bring.

He said he wanted to take his own life and that he admitted himself voluntarily to a psychiatric hospital. In July, while receiving psychiatric care, he attempted suicide.

Shortly before the hearing, he was involuntarily admitted to hospital for psychiatric care and monitoring.

He told the court that publication would damage his relationship with his 13-year-old son and that the act of being notified about the media organisations’ findings had led to a serious decline in his mental health.

He sought an injunction to stop the allegations being published, relying on Articles 2, 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The European Court on Human Rights in Strasbourg, France

Both sides agreed the court did not need to determine whether the allegations were true.

Article 2 safeguards the right to life, Article 3 prohibits torture, and Article 8 protects private and family life.

Typically, ECHR arguments are used to protect individuals from state action. Here, the alleged human-rights violators were two private-sector media organisations: The Guardian and ITN.

The presiding judge, Mr Justice Matthew Nicklin — a High Court specialist in privacy and defamation — said open justice, with named parties and public reporting, is the normal rule, but it is not absolute. In some circumstances, he said, restrictions such as anonymity can be justified in the interests of justice.

According to reporting in the Law Society Gazette this week, “the parties had agreed that the claimant (Mr Walliams) be assessed by a Single Joint Expert (a psychiatrist) within the injunction proceedings.

“That psychiatrist had produced a substantive report in September 2026, in which he identified serious mental vulnerability and an elevated risk of suicide and self-harm.

“His opinion was that, were the court to permit publication, the anticipation of publication and publication itself would produce a very substantial increase in the risk of psychiatric deterioration, suicidal ideation and suicidal acts.

“Nicklin J considered the psychiatric and other evidence. Although the claimant was at risk of suicide and publication would cause a very substantial increase in that risk, his stated intentions did not establish that suicide was inevitable.

“Publication while the claimant remained in hospital would be significantly safer in terms of reducing the likelihood of a successful suicide.”

Read more:
Met Police investigating allegations against David Walliams
UK publisher drops books by David Walliams

Put plainly, Mr Walliams asked the court to stop publication on the basis that he would take his own life if the stories ran; that the existence of the investigation and its write-up amounted to torture or inhuman and degrading treatment; and that publication would harm his relationship with his son.

Mr Justice Nicklin noted that the application was not built on defamation, misuse of private information, or other domestic legal claims. Instead, it relied exclusively on provisions of European human-rights law originally designed to restrain states, not private individuals or organisations.

He also stressed that the media organisations — and the sources who spoke to them — have rights too, including Article 10 protections for freedom of expression and thought. In his judgment, Mr Justice Nicklin wrote: “The injunction sought would constitute an exceptionally serious interference with the rights engaged on the other side.

“It would prohibit the defendants from publishing the results of their investigations into allegations of serious wrongdoing by a prominent individual.

“It would also prevent the sources whose accounts form part of those investigations from communicating their experiences to the public through the defendants, thereby interfering with their Article 10 rights and, insofar as they seek to tell their own stories, with the interests in personal autonomy protected by Article 8.”

He found that while the state has duties to protect life, that did not translate into an obligation to act against private organisations where the claimed threat to life was based on the claimant’s own perception. He noted the state was seeking to protect Mr Walliams by treating him in a psychiatric hospital.

“Article 8 does not require the court to eliminate every source of psychiatric distress by imposing a prior restraint upon the lawful activities of private parties.”

In refusing to grant an injunction to block publication, the judge wrote: “The journalism concerns matters of substantial public interest; the restraint sought would be comprehensive and potentially indefinite; the information itself is not alleged to be private; and the court is not in a position to find that the defendants’ investigation lacks a proper evidential foundation or that the proposed publications make no genuine contribution to public debate.”

In effect, he concluded that public participation — by the media organisations and by the private individuals who gave their accounts — merited protection.

In short, he ruled that David Walliams’ claim that he would kill himself if the stories were published did not justify stopping publication, and that the ECHR was not an appropriate foundation for the injunction application.

The case is not the first in which European-derived legal arguments have been used in domestic courts to try to prevent stories being published. CASE, a Brussels-based coalition monitoring SLAPPs across Europe, is campaigning for an end to such actions.

CASE says its research shows a growing pattern of GDPR being used as the basis for attempts to block publication.

It also reports that EU competition law is increasingly being invoked to support injunction applications, documenting six known cases. Digital takedown demands and claims of copyright infringement are another path — with the copyright route described as particularly sinister.

In its latest report, CASE says: “When a journalist is targeted for alleged copyright infringement over an image or proprietary quote used in an exposé, the legal focus is displaced from the substance and truthfulness of the reporting to the technicalities of usage rights.

“Such cases qualify as SLAPPs not by virtue of invoking copyright law per se, but where copyright is instrumentalised in bad faith to suppress lawful, public-interest reporting – particularly where the use is incidental, proportionate, or defensible under exceptions such as quotation or reporting.

“This enables SLAPP filers to silence critical online content – most commonly reporting on corruption (36.1% of 2,024 cases) or business-related issues – without ever having to contest the factual accuracy of the underlying investigation.”

Alongside these evolving legal strategies are more familiar forms of “lawfare”: launching multiple proceedings, deploying expensive legal teams and seeking huge damages to deter targets from fighting — and to make publication risky even after a win.

The cost burden in SLAPP-style litigation can be so severe that even being accused of bringing such an action can trigger consequences. Yesterday, the Belfast band Kneecap received an apology from Sky News after a contributor wrongly alleged the band had used SLAPP actions to suppress coverage.

The CASE report is produced and researched by the Daphne Caruana Galizia foundation, created in memory of the Maltese investigative journalist murdered by a car bomb.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese journalist was killed by a car bomb in 2017

At the time she was killed, Daphne Caruana Galizia faced 48 lawsuits intended to stop her reporting on corruption in Malta. Under Maltese law, her family inherited those cases, and they are still being fought nine years later.

Since 2010, CASE has recorded around 1,300 SLAPP-type suits across Europe. Of these, 91 were brought in Malta, an island of 588,000 people.

France has the same total. Only Poland, with 140 cases, has more. Ireland has seen 34, compared with 51 in the far larger United Kingdom and 38 in Germany. Denmark and Finland, countries of roughly comparable population size, recorded seven and two cases respectively.

Most SLAPP cases, the monitoring group says, centre on alleged corruption or business malpractice. Just 26 of the 1,303 documented cases involve sexual abuse allegations.

In the wake of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder, the European Union introduced ‘Daphne’s Law’ in 2024 — legislation banning cross-border SLAPPs, the only area in which the EU could act directly.

However, as member states transpose the directive into domestic legislation, many are aligning their national rules with the EU approach, effectively making SLAPPs unlawful within countries as well as across borders.

Ireland moved more slowly than some to legislate, prompting the European Commission to begin infringement proceedings in May, shortly before Ireland’s EU presidency was due to begin.

Now, legislation is moving quickly through the Oireachtas. It has passed the Dáil and cleared second stage in the Seanad, with broad cross-party support in both houses.

The bill has been cleared by the Dáil and has passed second stage in the Seanad

When introducing the Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation Bill 2026 in the Dáil, Minster of State at the Department of Justice Catherine Ardagh said: “SLAPPs are abusive court proceedings which are not taken to assert a right or seek genuine redress but to prevent, restrict or penalise public participation by threatening and intimidating people or organisations engaged in public criticism or debate.

“Common targets of SLAPPs include journalists, media outlets, and human rights defenders. SLAPP proceedings are often characterised by an imbalance of power with one party using the significant resources at their disposal to place financial and psychological pressure on the other.

“SLAPPs create a chilling effect on public interest reporting and debate and pose a significant danger to press freedom, public access to information and to democracy itself.

“The consequences of SLAPPs have been recognised at EU level. An anti-SLAPP recommendation was adopted by the European Commission in 2022 followed by the anti-SLAPP directive which came into force in 2024.

“The directive requires member states to introduce minimum procedural safeguards to combat abusive proceedings against public participation in civil and commercial cases which have a cross-border dimension.

“Those protections include the early dismissal of proceedings which are clearly or manifestly unfounded and the ability for targets of SLAPPs to seek more generous costs and damages as well as security for those costs and damages,” she said.

Notably, the draft law would also extend protection to Irish organisations and individuals facing SLAPPs brought in non-EU countries, including Britain.

Speaking in the Dáil on 29 September, Minister Ardagh said: “Section 13 prohibits the recognition or enforcement of judgments made in third-country proceedings that would have been considered abusive court proceedings against public participation, or manifestly unfounded if they had been initiated in the State.

“Section 14 allows targets of third-country SLAPP proceedings domiciled in Ireland to seek a declaration that those proceedings are abusive proceedings against public participation within the meaning of the legislation.

“Where such a declaration is made, a defendant may also seek compensation for damages and costs incurred in the third-country proceedings.”

The bill aims to redress the financial imbalance typically faced by defendants in SLAPP disputes — often journalists, publishers, campaign groups and whistleblowers — by exposing unsuccessful plaintiffs to steeper cost consequences.

The minister said: “Section 11 enables a target of SLAPP proceedings to seek damages for any injury, loss or harm suffered as a result of those proceedings.

“This is a significant provision which recognises the extraordinary and abusive nature of SLAPP proceedings.

“Its effect is two-fold. It will allow a defendant to obtain compensation for material and non-material damages resulting from the bringing of the proceedings, undercutting the frequent goal of SLAPP litigants to use financial pressure to silence public debate.

“SLAPP defendants will, therefore, be able to fully defend against a claim, secure in the knowledge that they will be able to seek compensation for their losses.

“These remedies will also deter those contemplating or pursuing SLAPP proceedings, by increasing their potential losses where they are unsuccessful.”

One practical effect is that a media outlet could go to court as soon as a suspected SLAPP is filed and ask for a finding that the proceedings are abusive, rather than being forced to fight the claim to the end before receiving protection.

The proposed “rapid strike out” measure is designed to undercut the value of tying up defendants in lengthy, costly litigation.

Courts would also be able to award punitive damages against those bringing claims to block publication, and could require plaintiffs to provide security for the defendants’ legal costs at the outset — giving targets greater certainty that expenses will be recoverable if the attempted SLAPP fails.

With legal bills in such disputes often enormous, that prospect could deter vexatious actions.

The legislation would also allow interested third parties, including NGOs and campaign groups, to submit “friends of the court” briefs in SLAPP cases. It would also require the existence of SLAPP cases to be published on the Courts Service website, narrowing the scope for secrecy.

Britain introduced anti-SLAPP legislation in 2025, but that law applies only where economic crime is alleged.

As matters stand, the law still allows wealthy, high-profile individuals such as David Walliams to attempt to prevent publication of material about their private lives.

Because Britain has no “rapid strike-out” clause, media organisations such as the Guardian and ITN may continue to incur huge costs to defend their right to free speech, free thought and freedom to publish.

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