The case of Blake & Anor v Fox [2025] highlighted the legal threshold for establishing “serious harm” under the Defamation Act 2013. The dispute arose on X (formerly Twitter) between actor and political activist Laurence Fox and two individuals who had accused him of racism after he posted comments encouraging a boycott of Sainsbury’s over its support for Black History Month. In response, Fox publicly labelled the pair “paedophiles”, prompting them to bring libel claims against him.
Our firm’s study on the previous judgment can be found here.
The facts
Fox was called a racist by Blake, Seymour, and one other person on X, and in return, he call all of them paedophiles. Blake and Seymour made claims against Fox alleging the defamatory nature of his comments causing them serious harm, and Fox made a counterclaim alleging the same regarding the comments made about him being a racist.
The judge dismissed all of Fox’s claims due to his failure to show any real and substantive harm to his reputation (or the possibility of causing it). Blake and Seymour also used the defence of honest opinion, where they demonstrated the factual basis of their views towards him and that the opinion was genuinely held and not maliciously stated with the intention of defaming him in mind. In addition, they had seen a post where he had expressed opinions that could indicate he was racially discriminating certain groups, and honestly believed he was a racist. Consequently, this incentivised them to publish their posts expressing such opinion.
The judgment in this case redefined the focus of “serious harm” within defamation claims, requiring actual consequences to be demonstrated by the claimant instead of simply the assumption of harm through the facts of the case.
The appeal
Fox appealed the judge’s decision regarding his unsuccessful counterclaim and Blake and Seymour’s claims, arguing that the definition of defamation causing significant reputational harm was misapplied, along with other points.
The judge took into account the fact that Fox had issued a public apology and had deleted his previous posts made against Blake alleging his paedophilic nature. As a result, the damages awarded to Blake and Seymour was reduced from £90,000 to £45,000 each.
The Court of Appeal also allowed Fox’s appeal for his counterclaims against Blake and Seymour, holding that:
- Publications of opinions could be less absolute and harmful than factual statements, but the claimants’ tweets had caused serious harm to Fox’s reputation.
- The court’s determination of causation was incorrect – it should have been whether the defamatory material had materially contributed to the harm, and not whether it was the sole cause of harm.
- The rule in Associated Newspapers Ltd v Dingle[1964] stated that parties cannot rely on external published or broadcasted material to claim that the other side’s reputation was already tarnished prior to the defamatory comments made. It was not used correctly in the judgment when assessing serious harm.
The upcoming retrial will consider these two main issues:
- The Defendants’ (Thorp, Blake and Seymour’s) defence of truth: whether it is true that Fox is a racist; and
- The Defendants’ defence of honest opinion: whether their comments towards Fox can be seen as honest opinion, with judgment based on the facts available to them in the moment.
We have a full article on these two defences.
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