U.K.
Court will Hear Irving Appeal in Lipstadt
Smear Case in June

LONDON — The Court of
Appeal in London agreed in an emergency hearing on March 2 to vacate the appeal date fixed for the hearing of David
Irving’s appeal against the unfavourable judgment handed down last year by Mr Justice
Gray in the historian’s action against
American scholar Deborah Lipstadt and her
UK publishers, Penguin Books Ltd.

A new date has been fixed:
June 11. Much will depend on Mr
Irving’s ability to raise sufficient
funds to match the huge legal effort
which the traditional enemies of free
speech will once again pour into the
British Law Courts when the appeal,
expected to last five days, begins.

The three-month trial was followed with intense interest by the world’s media, and the stunning adverse judgment

on Apr. 11
last year was reported across pages of
Britain’s national newspapers. Lipstadt’s team ran through six million dollars, provided to them by Steven
Spielberg and alcohol-billionaire
Edgar J Bronfman.

The neutral witnesses whom the Atlanta-based scholar and her U.K. publishers had summoned were gorged on immense fees of up to a quarter a million dollars each to assist them in their search for objectivity.

After several court hearings over the last months conducted by Mr Irving’s legal team, which is now headed by barrister
Adrian Davies, the court had unexpectedly fixed Mar. 19 as the date for the hearing of his application for permission to appeal, which is expected to be followed immediately by the appeal itself.

“This was worse than an ambush,” says
Davies, referring to the previous Mar. 19
fixture. “There was no way that we could instruct a Leader” — a Silk, or Queen’s
Counsel — “and give him time to study the immense documentation on the case by then.” At an earlier hearing

on Jan. 17, the two Judges of appeal who had defeated the publisher’s attempts to destroy Mr
Irving’s chances of appealing clearly stipulated that Counsel must have time to
“read into” the documents. The trial generated a five-foot shelf of transcripts.

See Also