A UK court has ordered PM Shehbaz, his son-in-law to pay legal costs to a tabloid in the 2019 defamation case

LAHORE: The Sharif family has a knack of attracting controversies and court cases. The latest one to hit them is in connection with the Daily Mail defamation case of 2019. In a major development, a high court in the UK recently dismissed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his son-in-law Imran Ali Yousuf’s request for extension and against Associated Newspapers Limited, which owns the tabloid Daily Mail.

The court also ordered Sharif to pay 30,000 pounds and Yousuf 27,055 pounds in legal fees due to the delays caused by their failure to submit their replies in the case.

In his order issued on November 9, Justice Matthew Nicklin of the King’s Bench Division, ruled that Mr Sharif and Mr Yousaf’s request for a stay order on proceedings was denied by the court, which has demanded that the two claimants respond to the defence presented by the newspaper and also pay the cost for earlier litigation incurred by the paper for the stay application.

The judge ruled that the defamation cases of the two claimants would be heard together and warned PM Shehbaz and his son that in case their replies were not submitted till November 23, their defamation claim would be struck out.

“Unless they come back to the court on December 13 with a detailed point-by-point rebuttal that satisfies the requirement of the reply, the case will be struck out,”the order read.

Under British law it is called “unless order” which requires a party to perform an obligation by a specified date or within a particular period, otherwise they will be penalised by the sanctions set out in the court.

It also gave a deadline for the payment of the legal fees, with PM Shehbaz given till November 23 for the payment of the complete 30,000 pounds (Rs 7.8 million).

Yousuf has to pay the first installment of 4,509 pounds on the same date as PM Shehbaz. However, the total amount of the legal costs he has been ordered to pay – 27,055 pounds (Rs7.1 million) – has been broken down into six installments paid at every 28-day interval.

According to reports, Sharif’s lawyer sought time from the court citing PM Shehbaz’s engagements due to being the head of government.

Upon this, it was reported, Justice Niklin rejected the request with the remark that the prime minister and the common man are equal in his court.

The court also said both Mr Sharif and his son-in law must file and serve amended replies to the defence presented by the paper, and that if the responses are not compliant under the rules set out under CPR PD 53B paragraph 4.7, they will be struck out.

The relevant paragraph 4.7 reads: “Where a defendant relies on a defence under section 2(truth), section 3 (honest opinion), or section 4 (publication on a matter of public interest) of the Defamation Act 2013, the claimant must serve a reply specifically admitting, not admitting, or denying that defence and setting out the claimant’s case in response to each fact alleged by the defendant in respect of it.”

This means the response submitted by Mr Sharif and his son-in-law must respond by addressing every aspect of the response filed by the paper.

Background of the Defamation Case

In 2019, the paper published an article alleging that Shehbaz Sharif had stolen and laundered the UK government’s aid money while he was chief minister of Punjab, claiming a retraction, damages and an apology.

Shehbaz Sharif then filed a defamation claim against the “grotesque allegation” in January 2020 against the Daily Mail and its journalist David Rose. The PML-N chief had demanded damages in his lawsuit, calling the Daily Mail’s allegations as totally false and propaganda.

In March this year, the newspaper submitted a 50-page response to Mr Sharif’s defamation suit. The publisher filed its response in court and presented the evidence on the basis of which it had published the news.

Shehbaz Sharif’s lawyers were asked by the court to file a reply, which has not been filed so far. Now the court has refused to give more time to PM Sharif.

A year after the claim in 2020, Justice Matthew Nicklin at a preliminary hearing had heard the arguments of both sides to determine the meaning of the words in the article. This ‘meaning hearing’ is a relatively new phenomenon in English courts which is done to save time and costs for both parties prior to the trial. At this stage, the judge determines how the defamatory words would be understood by an “ordinary reasonable reader”.

In this particular case, the judge ruled that the article meant that Mr Sharif is guilty of some very specific crimes. The publication now has the uphill task of proving these crimes to be substantially true.

Although the ‘meaning hearing’ is by no means a conclusive decision on the defamation claim itself, it is a critical step in the case as it lays the framework for the defence that can be used by the publication.

A senior lawyer Ahmed Khan, commenting on the situation, said in order to sue the Daily Mail successfully for defamation, Mr Sharif’s lawyers would need to prove that first the article is identifiably about him; second, that the article means he is guilty of stealing tens of millions from DFID and laundering it to the UK; third, that the article was published by Associated Papers Limited and lastly that its publication caused or is likely to harm the reputation of Mr Sharif.

He explained: “The Mail, however, can use the defence of truth to defend its publication of the defamatory statement. According to the current law and as established in the case of Chase v News Group Newspapers Ltd, “the defendant does not have to prove that every word he or she published was true but has to establish the “essential” or “substantial” truth of the sting of the libel”.

Justice Nicklin held that the allegations made about Mr Sharif are clear, and there is insufficient evidence to lead an ordinary reader to think otherwise about his guilt.

The publication now has to prove that it is substantially true that, as it alleged, Mr Sharif was party to and the principal beneficiary of money laundering to the extent of tens of millions of pounds which represented his proceeds of embezzlements while he was the chief minister — and that the public money included funds from a DFID grant payment.

British law also says that it is no defence to an action for defamation for the defendant to prove that he or she was only repeating what someone else had said — known as the “repetition rule”.

In a reference pending in the national accountability court against Mr Sharif, NAB had previously claimed that there is ample evidence in the form of “TTs, cheques, on the record confessions etc.”

But interestingly, Justice Nicklin said that even if Mr Sharif is convicted in Pakistan, that conviction in itself does not amount to substantial evidence that can be used in a successful defence of truth.

This means that, if the case goes to trial in the UK, regardless of the outcome in Pakistan and what officials here charge Mr Sharif with, the UK trial court will form its own conclusions about how compelling the evidence is as regards the corruption specified in the article.

If Shehbaz Sharif and his son-in-law manage to submit their rebuttals by December 13, the matter will proceed to a case management conference or pre-trial hearing. The attorneys for both sides would decide what evidence was admissible and set the date for the formal trial. Shehbaz Sharif and his son-in-law will have to appear in the witness box once the matter reaches the trial stage, where defence attorneys will cross-examine them.

In its 50-page response submitted last year, the publisher detailed Shehbaz Sharif’s period of political office as Punjab chief minister between 1997 and 1999 and then 2008 and 2018, saying that he had control over the provincial budget as well as public-private partnerships. It alleged the “receipt of laundered funds” by Shehbaz Sharif’s immediate family and companies under their control. It also claims the receipt of fictitious foreign remittances by the claimant’s immediate family, which it says is evidence by SWIFT records.

The response alleged that from around 2015 onwards, “payments of fraudulent foreign remittances began to be routed through a further layer of bank accounts belonging to third-party companies which, although independently owned, were in fact operated at material times at the behest of the claimant and his Immediate Family”.