In May 2023 Mr Rubython wrote a 2,500 word article in BusinessF1 magazine, Formula One’s business magazine, about the career of Ken Bates, including amongst other things an analysis of the helicopter accident that killed Matthew Harding.

92-year-old Mr Bates, who lives in Monaco, issued libel proceedings soon afterwards which Mr Rubython and BusinessF1 defended on the basis that Bates had no reputation, or a poor reputation and was therefore not entitled to any damages, or minimal damages.

Mr Rubython’s Defence was purely that Mr Bates had no reputation and therefore could not have been defamed. A secondary defence was that he had suffered no serious harm which would be self evident if it was found that he had no reputation.

The outcome of the case hinged entirely on the level of damages Mr Bates was awarded, which reflected on whether not not he had a reputation to defame.

Mr Rubython’s Witness Statement was wholly constructed to argue the case that Mr Bates had a poor, or no reputation and 60 separate examples were given as to why this was the case backed up by 57 separate Discovery documents.

It was crystal clear that Mr Bates’s lack of a reputation was the issue at the trial. However, on the morning of the trial William McCormick, Mr Bates counsel, applied for the whole of Mr Rubython’s Witness Statement to be stuck out on the basis that it was defending the truth of the article and did not put the case for Mr Bates’s lack of reputation.

Mr Rubython again stated very forcibly to the Judge that his Witness Statement solely concerned Mr Bates’s reputation and emphasised there was no defence of truth, or otherwise of the article, solely Mr Bates reputation. The Judge also ruled out Mr Rubython and BusinessF1’s three witnesses on the basis he would not be able to question them on any points of his Witness Statement because it had all been ruled out.

The Judge did permit Mr Rubython to ask one salient question regarding reputation which was how many libel writs had Mr Bates had to issue during his lifetime to defend his reputation. Mr Bates refused to answer.

In particular, Mr Rubython was not allowed to question Mr Bates about a previous case where he had been sued for defamation, and later harassment of Melvyn Levi.

Mr Rubython was denied a fair trial on the basis that Judge Eardley excluded his entire Witness Statement making all the Discovery documents inadmissible which contained the evidence of Mr Bates poor reputation.

The decision to strike out all 60 paragraphs from Mr Rubython’s Witness Statement was clearly wrong. It would have been arguable perhaps to strike out 20 or 30 of the paragraphs due to poor drafting, or relevance but not all 60.