World’s Worst Tennis Pro Also A Terrible Plaintiff

Libel and defamation lawsuits are considerably easier to win in Britain than they are in the United States, where the party bringing the suit not only has to prove that the allegedly libelous statement was factual false, but damaging to the party being referenced and was the made out of malice by the person giving the statement. ↵↵Nevertheless, if the statement isn’t objectively true, none of those nettlesome additional factors even come into play.↵

↵↵So when pro tennis player Robert Dee took the newspaper the Daily Telegraph to court in London for calling him the worst tennis player in the world, all he had to do was prove he wasn’t so bad. How hard could that be? Only because he happened to lose 54 straight matches, which is enough to tie a record in international pro tennis, that doesn’t discount the few matches he had won on the Spanish Tour, even if those don’t technically count toward Association of Tennis Professionals rankings, right?↵

↵↵In a word: no.↵

↵↵⇥“There is nothing ... of which the claimant actually complains that cannot be justified,” the Hon. Mrs Justice Sharp ruled. “And the facts are sufficient to justify any defamatory meaning the words complained of are capable of bearing.”↵⇥↵⇥The judge ruled that the Spanish tournaments, basically, didn’t count against the record of 54 straight losses, and the paper had “no additional obligation,” to prove that Dee “is objectively the worst professional tennis player in the world, in terms of his playing skills.”↵⇥

↵↵↵Thereby, in the eyes of the both the law and public sentiment, Robert Dee is the worst pro tennis player in the world. And I can write that without freaking out our lawyers.↵

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