The Law Society Gazette reports
he High Court has dismissed an order allowing a Swiss lawyer to bring a libel claim against Wikimedia in England and Wales.
Matthew Parish was granted an order to serve Wikimedia Foundation Inc out of the jurisdiction with a claim for libel centered on an article about Parish which was published on a Wikipedia page. The article covered his forgery conviction in Geneva, Switzerland, following a trial in 2021. He was sentenced to three years imprisonment and prohibited from practising law in Switzerland for five years.
Wikimedia made an application to set aside the order on the grounds that Parish’s claim had no real prospect of success; England was not the most appropriate forum and Parish ‘failed to comply with the duty of full and frank disclosure’.
Granting the application, Mrs Justice Steyn said that though Parish’s ‘professional reputation may be global, it is clear that he is most well-known in Switzerland’ and she was ‘not persuaded that England is clearly the most appropriate forum for the claim’.
Finding Parish had failed to satisfy the forum Test, the judge said the facts underlying the statements complained of ‘have nothing to do with England’.
