David Irving’s Legal Battles
Sereny and Lipstadt: The two Libel Actions Briefly Explained
- Deborah Lipstadt’s illegal postings of Mr Irving’s privileged documents on her university website
- BBC and Nick Fraser: Fear & Loathing on the Far Right (libel)
- Australian Government (ban): government lost first round; under pressure, it altered law to enable it to ban Mr irving on other, new, grounds.
- Jeremy Jones and Australia Israel Publications (libel) (settled out of court) under construction
- Board of Deputies of British Jews (libel): Board did not attempt to justify its libels, pleaded Mr Irving was out of time, tried to bankrupt him over costs and failed
- Canadian Government (wrongful deportation): Rothstein J refused leave to apply for judicial review
- The Sunday Times (libel) (settled out of court) under construction
- The Sunday Times (breach of contract, Goebbels Diaries) (settled out of court) under construction
- Data Protection Agency, UK (non-compliance of Board of Deputies of British Jews with data protection law)
- France (freedom of speech): fined £50 for a newspaper interview in London
- German Government (freedom of speech): fined DM30,000 for stating a true fact; banned from Germany
- John Lukacs (libel): writ will be issued if book is published unaltered in the UK; he eventually published the book after deleting the most serious libels
- Lipstadt and Penguin (libel): fought in the High Court January – April 2000, appealed June 2001; defeat in both courts.
- Macmillan UK (betrayal of author): under pressure from Board of Deputies of British Jews, they secretly destroyed all Mr Irving’s books without telling him
- PQ.17 (libel, defendant): Royal Navy officer, Capt Jack E Broome, DSO, who (wrongly) claimed he was blamed for the convoy disaster, suuccessfully sued Cassell & Co and DJC Irving; the case was tried in January 1970; damages awarded incl. punitive damages, £40,000; defendants appealed to Court of Appeal, and then to the House of Lords, and again to the Lords on the issue of costs, where they were partially successful.
- Reed International (logo infringement): evidently abandoned
- Sereny and Observer (libel): current action
- St Martins Press, New York (betrayal of author): no further action
