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Legal
John ends legal action against Guardian’s spoof diary piece
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 27 March 2009
Elton John has decided not to proceed with an appeal in relation to an earlier libel claim against the Guardian newspaper over a spoof diary piece that mocked the singer’s famous charity balls.
As previously reported, John sued over an article written by Marina Hyde for the newspaper’s weekend magazine. Pretending to be a diary piece written by the singer himself, the piece implied John’s White Tie And Tiara Ball events were mainly an excuse for partying with celebrities, and an opportunity to boost the singer’s ego, and actually raised very little money for charity. While the balls may enable the singer to party with celebrities, and probably do boost his ego, they do actually raise an awful lot of cash for the Elton John AIDS Foundation, hence the defamation lawsuit.
But Hyde and the Guardian argued that the piece was clearly a spoof, and that readers of the paper were clever enough to realise any claims in the article were not fact. Last December a high court judge sided with the journalist and paper and threw out the libel claims, but John appealed.
Last week a Court Of Appeal judge refused John permission to appeal the original ruling and ordered the singer to pay costs. Yesterday the singer’s lawyers confirmed they would not appeal the appeal judge’s ruling regarding the appeal. Or something like that. Which means that this particular pop court case is, I think, closed.
