New British Survey on Defamation Shows Rise in Settlements

According to a new Sweet and Maxwell survey, fewer media defendants are willing to take a defamation case all the way through to a verdict. Instead, they’re more willing to resort to settlements. The researchers believe that such settlements result from more competition among media outlets for stories that the public wants to see but that may lead to litigation, thus leading to the media’s acknowledgement that the stories were factually problematic. The results of the survey highlight plaintiffs’ lawyers’ increasing willingness to take cases on contingency. Read more here from the Guardian. Here’s more from the Times on a prior survey.