Katie Hopkins

She went down in costs as well and must pay 70% of Jack Monroe's cost which amounted to £107,000.

This means that Jack Monroe will be around £9,000 out of pocket once one takes into account the damages and the contribution to costs.

Hopkins, on the other hand will be significantly more out of pocket as she will pay £24,000 damages plus around £75,000 for Monroe's costs and then have to bear her own costs herself. These are unlikely to be less than £107,000 meaning that she will be at least £200,000 out of pocket.

As with all libel cases, the only winners are the lawyers who will be £200,000 + richer.

That said, Jack Monroe did the right thing and showed huge courage taking on the Hopkins bully. The court's decision is well reasoned and worth reading if you use social media and particularly Twitter.

Really delighted with the result. A victory for us libtards and snowflakes and for reason and justice.

Also noticeable that there is nothing on the Mail website about this, nor has Hopkins tweeted anything. She didn't turn up in court.

Wow, that's amazing. Is it usual that both the people involved in Libel cases lose money?

Crazy that the top way to make money from Twitter is now, "Get abused by Katie Hopkins".

Yes. Libel damages are never huge unless you can show actual monetary loss. Libel is expensive to fight. Often there are huge evidential issues which require a lot of lawyering. This was a relatively cheap fight. Much of the strategy of libel cases often rests on screwing the other side for costs by making a settlement offer under Part 36 of the CPR which would allow you indemnity costs (ie 100%) of your costs if you win or do better than your offer. In this case the judge did not award indemnity costs.

The reported judgment doesn't deal with costs, but the costs of £107,000 would have been costs on account. Jack Monroe may well receive more once the costs are assessed, although I agree that if the costs payable on account are £107,000 then the chances are that she'll break even at best with damages of £24,000.

The principle that the only winners in litigation are the lawyers isn't limited to libel cases. It's something I remind my clients of all the time. They are often still very keen to have their day in court. Go figure.

Indemnity costs doesn't mean 100% recovery. Standard costs means that the receiving party gets their costs to the extent that they can prove that they were reasonably incurred. Indemnity costs means that the receiving party gets their costs, save to the extent that the paying party can prove that they were unreasonably incurred. Going from standard to indemnity costs reverses the burden of proof, but you'll still generally only get 80-90% of your actual costs, even on the indemnity basis.

I suspect both would have had support from elsewhere.

But yea. Pricey.

Thank goodness it was the 'right' result.

Just seen that the £107,000 was to be paid on account and not total and so full cost to La Hopkins will be closer to or possibly over quarter of a million.

I used to do libel work but gave it up for the more esoteric world of reinsurance law 35 years ago, primarily because it is very often vanity litigation; vanity of some disreputable people who sued and vanity among journalists who were sued. Massaging people's ego for a living has its limitations.

That said, there are some cases which need to be fought. This is certainly one of them.

Started the Katie Hopkins diet today... lost 24000 pounds already

There's a joke to be made saying the diet involves Jack Monroe recipes or something

And £ cost per character tweeted needs to be worked out

Really delighted with the result. A victory for us libtards and snowflakes and for reason and justice.

I'm sure it's stuff you know already but for everyone else I'd read this before getting too excited.

Full judgement's worth a read:
https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/monroe-v-hopkins-2017-ewhc-433-qb-20170310.pdf

Read what? Did you mean to have a link under 'this'?

Also, could someone perhaps explain what 'costs on account' means? I've tried searching the Internet and it seems like too much work. :)

The defendant gets £24k from Hopkins, but Hopkins will also have to pay the associated costs that those in the know are saying will be in excess of £300k.

As is noted in paragraph 83 of the judgment Hopkins could have settled for £5k

This case has been about the particular tweets complained of by this claimant against
this defendant. It may have little wider significance. But I cannot leave it without
making two observations. The first is that the case could easily have been resolved at
an early stage. There was an open offer to settle for £5,000. It was a reasonable offer.
There could have been an offer of amends under the Defamation Act 1996. Such an
offer attracts a substantial discount: up to half if the offer is prompt and unqualified.
Such an offer would have meant the compensation would have been modest. The
costs would have been a fraction of those which I am sure these parties have incurred
in the event. Those costs have largely been incurred in contesting the issue of whether
a statement which on its face had a defamatory tendency had actually caused serious
harm.

Monroe's costs are now being placed at around £300,000 of which she we recover around 2/3 from Hopkins and so total cost to Hopkins including her own legal fees and damages is likely to exceed £500,000. Sadly the deficiet for Monroe is likely to be around £100,000.

It means 'The other side are going to have to pay your costs, and how much you're entitled to will have to be assessed at a later date. But here's a proportion of your costs to be getting on with.'

General rule of thumb=

Payment on account: 50% of what you've actually spent
Total costs on the standard basis: 65-70% of what you've actually spent
Total costs on the indemnity basis: 80-90% of what you've actually spent

I'd guess Jack's total costs bill is in the order of £200k, and she'll probably get back another £20-30k on top of the £107k she's already been awarded.

It means the cost that is already known.

The rest is only estimated and will still have to be worked out.

(From The Secret Barrister on the Twitter.)

David Allen Green, who is an authoritative person and who seems to have been in court, said that the total was £300,000.

Yeah, that was the fella from whom I got the £300k I posted above.

https://twitter.com/Law_and_policy/status/840227323907567616

I hope this all works out for Jack, really brilliant result... Megalulz...

She tweeted from her personal account so she is personally liable I think. She's supposed to be worth £4m or something but it's still a hefty hit.

Judge on whether Monroe had received a "torrent" of abuse:

There are some unsatisfactory aspects to Ms Monroe’s evidence on this
point.The tweets themselves have for the most part been deleted, by
means of an automatic deletion app which she installed one night but
then seems to have forgotten about for a while.