A special hearing on whether I should have permission to appeal against the judgment in Rachel Riley’s libel hearing against me will take place on January 31.​

I don’t yet know what time it will happen or in which court. That information will not be available until January 31.

It is possible that the Court of Appeal will screen the hearing on YouTube again – as it did with my appeal against the strike-out of my defences, back in 2021. That event attracted thousands of viewers, in comparison with only a few hundred for others.

It means there are 21 days left to raise funds to support my argument.

I wrote last week that I had been told I need to raise around £15,000 to fund the hearing. Since then, more than £1,500 has been donated – more than one-tenth of the total.

That’s a fantastic start, post-Christmas in a year when the UK is going into recession and everybody is facing huge pressures on their finances.

But obviously it isn’t full funding so please continue to give as much as you can – and encourage as many other people as possible to do the same. Here’s how:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

Use other social media in the same way.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

I am also interested in seeking alternative routes for funding. If you have any suggestions, please send them to me via the Comments section of Vox Political – https://voxpoliticalonline.com

I moderate all comments so your suggestion won’t automatically appear online; it’s simply the easiest way to get ideas to me.

There is a real chance, here, to claw justice back from a bad decision. Please don’t let it slip away.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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Once again we discover that justice isn’t cheap, in a land where it should be free.

My legal team has advised me that I need to raise around £15,000 to fund the special hearing on whether I should have permission to appeal against the judgment in Rachel Riley’s libel case.

The hearing will happen at the end of January or beginning of February, so the timescale is tight – but still possible.

Several times in the last four years, the CrowdJustice fund has jumped by up to £7,000 in a single day; it made £5,000 on the day it was launched.

But that was before the government managed to mess up everybody’s finances by trashing the economy. If donations come in as fast now, I will be extremely pleasantly surprised.

The reason for the high price tag seems to be associated with the fact that Rachel Riley was awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours list, for services the BBC linked to winning her case against me.

A possible reason for this making our case harder to prove is provided in this video:

The gist is that the so-called Establishment will try to protect Ms Riley, now that she has received this.

But won’t it be interesting to see what happens if she loses at the hearing, and if she loses at the appeal?​

I would like to see that, and I hope you would too.

So please, now and whenever you have a chance:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

Use other social media in the same way.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

This has become more than just a piece of civil justice.

It is now about questioning a system that offers protection to people who may not deserve it.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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The Court of Appeal has suggested that the special hearing on whether to grant permission for my appeal against Rachel Riley’s libel win will be held on either January 25, January 31 or February 1.​

This is actually a little later than I had been led to believe, and I hope it means that I and my team will be better-prepared than we might otherwise have been, when we finally get to face the judge.

It also provides more time to raise funds to pay for the hearing. The announcement that Ms Riley has been awarded an MBE in the New Year Honours list has attracted a flurry of donations but more is needed.

Please, even if you have already donated, continue to provide as much as you can spare, or help in the other ways listed below:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

Use other social media in the same way.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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I feel so privileged!

Sarcasm aside, I do find it interesting that Rachel Riley’s lawsuit against me was considered the sixth most important of 2022 – immediately after Johnny Depp’s case against Amber Heard.

I could discuss the huge imbalance between the amount of publicity the Depp case received and the coverage that I had – and the effect that may have had on public perception, particularly of my defence, which was hardly discussed in mainstream news reports.

But why cry over spilt milk when the case isn’t over?

I certainly hope Suneet Sharma will continue to monitor the case, which is still active after an Appeal Court judge ordered a special hearing to decide whether I should have permission to appeal.

6. Riley v Sivier [2022] EWHC 2891 (KB)

A libel trial of former Countdown presenter Rachel Riley against blogger Mike Sivier, in which Riley was successful and awarded £50,000 and an injunction against Mr Sivier.

The case concerned an article on the defendants’ blog which label Riley as a “serial abuser”. The trial considered whether the claim met the threshold for serious harm and whether public interest defence was made out in relation to the claims.

My defence is crowdfunded via the CrowdJustice website – not being a millionaire, I don’t have the financial wherewithal to fight my corner any other way.

If you have heard of the case, but only via the mainstream media, you may wish to learn about my defence by visiting the CrowdJustice site.

After that, you may be moved to support my defence. You can do this in several ways:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

Use other social media in the same way.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

Source: Top 10 Defamation Cases 2022: a selection – Suneet Sharma – Inforrm’s Blog

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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The Court of Appeal has ordered a special hearing of my application for permission to appeal against the judgment in Rachel Riley’s libel case against me.​

This is highly unusual. Practically unheard-of, in fact.

The decision was made by Lord Justice Warby, who has some knowledge of the case, having been a member of the panel that granted my appeal against Ms Riley’s application to strike out all my defences last year.

He has said that the case attracted considerable publicity at the time of the trial in July, and it is desirable for the decision on PTA to be open and transparent, whichever way it goes.

If he had thought that the appeal was plainly weak, he was perfectly entitled to reject it on the papers and draw the appeal to an immediate conclusion. The fact that he has listed a hearing suggests that he thinks there is something in my appeal that is worth consideration.

That might particularly be the case where he dealt with the previous appeal so understands the background well enough to reasonably make a decision on the papers.

If so, I appreciate that it will come as a terrible shock to the pro-Riley trolls on the social media, who have spent more than a month trying to convince my supporters that there is no point in continuing to fund me. Clearly – at least for the time being – they have been shown to have been misleading their readers.

On the other hand, the Appeal Court judge might have largely made up his mind but wants a public hearing so that neither I nor Ms Riley can later complain that the appeal was decided without either of us being heard.

I’m not inclined to believe this because it would not seem to be a good use of court resources to order a highly-unusual hearing, merely to make refusal to grant the appeal more emphatic.

The judge has provided guidance on what he wants my representative (and Ms Riley’s) to discuss and I am talking with my legal team about our response. It means I have spent Christmas going through the judgment and the evidence to identify the best information to use.

But all of this will be pointless if I can’t afford to fund my defence!

I think I have raised enough to pay my Counsel for the excellent appeal documents that he wrote, and that were filed with the court on December 7.That still leaves my solicitors to pay, and then funds must be raised for the work that is now being done, and for the hearing, which will be in mid-January and will last just one and a half hours.

It is vital that this hearing is funded. I know it is happening very soon after my last fundraising drive – and with the Christmas holidays taking place around us, and the timing is certainly unfortunate.

But this is about justice.

We won’t see it if we don’t do everything we can to get it.

So, please:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

Use other social media in the same way.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

My appeal has turned a High Court loss into a fighting chance to win – but I can’t do it without you. Please help in any way that you can.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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Remember my last update, when I stated that my appeal against Rachel Riley’s libel victory had been submitted and she had until December 21 to provide a short, written response?

She has – but there is nothing remarkable in it.

Her core argument is that the original judgment is so comprehensively against me that, even if parts of the appeal could succeed, the overall outcome would be the same so allowing the appeal to proceed would not be a good use of court time.

Basically, she’s saying even if the judge is found to have been wrong, we should not dare to suggest that this means her judgment may be mistaken. Can you see the problem with that?

I and my legal team did our best to head off these arguments in the papers we filed on December 7.

If we manage to succeed on parts of the appeal, it would undermine the evidence base for the rest of the judgment.

And the appeal identifies major errors, made by the judge, that undermine her judgment.

The next part of the case, according to the government’s Justice website, is apparently for my solicitors to send bundles and/or documents to the court, in support of the appeal.

I have a feeling that those bundles/documents should answer the points made by Ms Riley in opposing my appeal.

But of course, solicitors need to be paid for the high-quality work they do. So, please:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

Use other social media in the same way.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

This is a risky business. The courts seem fundamentally opposed to the reasoning that encouraged me to write an article about Ms Riley in the first place.

But it was the Court of Appeal that gave me the chance to present my case – and said that, if correctly argued, I should be able to win.

Given the opportunity to consider my evidence, I’m optimistic that I may secure another decision in my favour. Please help me get that chance.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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It may be some time before we hear from the Court of Appeal on whether my appeal against Rachel Riley’s libel victory will be allowed to proceed or not.​

The relevant documents were submitted in advance of last Wednesday’s deadline and have been accepted by the court.

Rachel Riley now has until December 21 to serve a three-page paper explaining why she thinks the appeal should not be permitted – if she wants to. This is an optional document but one the Court of Appeal encourages respondents to file.

I will greet the arrival of any such information with great interest.

After that, I’m told not to expect a decision in 2022. The court term is practically over and an appeal submitted in December is hardly going to be first in line for consideration. Hopefully we’ll get a response after the new term begins in January.

Will the appeal be allowed?

Good question.

The Court of Appeal may permit appeals to proceed when the appeal has some real prospect of success or where there is some other compelling reason for the appeal to be heard.

“May” is the important word, because the court has discretion not to permit an appeal to proceed, even if it meets either of the two criteria – for example, if a judge decides it would not be a good use of the court’s resources.

With my appeal, I have tried to emphasise concerns about the way the law was applied and to flag up the need to clarify it in the future. Did the judge really give regard to “all the circumstances of the case” where factual information that might be expected to have a bearing on the judgment seems to have been ignored?

We also question the judge’s decision on the application of my editorial judgement.

If an appeal is granted on either or both of these bases, then we can have a hearing in the Court of Appeal that may change the overall outcome of this case.

So there is still a vital need for funding. I need to finish paying for the cost of my Counsel drafting the appeal, and I fear Ms Riley’s legal team are likely to try to throw as many spanners into the works as they possibly can. Responding to them costs money – and we all know how much they enjoy depleting my resources.

If you’ve been following the case this far – and I’m fairly sure you have – then you’ll know what comes next. I’ll state it anyway. Please:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

Use other social media in the same way.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

You may see comments from trolls on Twitter and other social media, who support Ms Riley and are attaching themselves to this case in order to discourage you from helping me. They will try to mislead you. Do not pay them any attention.

In fact, their nonsense postings have helped me out – but I’ll give you more on that in another update.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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My appeal against the libel judgment against me has been submitted to the Court of Appeal – minutes before the deadline.​

Grounds for appeal and a skeleton argument were drafted by my Counsel, with a little input from myself, and we must now await a decision.

I can’t say too much about it, but it centres on the judge’s failure to have regard for all the circumstances of the case, as required by the Defamation Act 2013, her failure to consider my editorial judgement in putting together the article Rachel Riley complained about… and one serious procedural irregularity.

It’s a long shot, and I have been warned not to have too much hope. But the public interest defence is a developing area of law and my appeal is based on points of law and procedure that – it may be argued – should be clarified.

Now all I have to do is pay for it.​

As I mentioned in a previous update, my Counsel’s costs are around £7,000 and my solicitors say theirs may also go that high. Recent donations to CrowdJustice mean the unspent fund stands at around £5,000. I would certainly like to be able to pay my Counsel before the end of the week.

So, if you can help, please:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

Use other social media in the same way.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

These are exciting times – again. While the chances of the appeal succeeding are slim, they would be nonexistant without your continuing support and I cannot tell you how much it means to my search for justice.

Let’s make sure this case can’t be ignored.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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While we wait for my Counsel to finish writing the grounds and skeleton argument for my appeal against the High Court judgment against me, let’s talk about the strange behaviour of some characters on the social media.​

Be warned that some of what follows contains language you may find shocking.

I have to admit, I haven’t been paying much attention to what people have been tweeting in response to my articles about the judgment and my plans for an appeal, so the following came as quite a jolt, when I received it from a friend on November 30:

For those of you who may not be able to read the words in an image file, it contains a tweet from somebody who stated, on the day the judgment against me was published, “May I be the first to say, tough shit Siver, you snivelling little turd. And to all those mugs who donated towards the £233,830 fundraiser he siphoned from you gullible fools, tough shit to you all too. Have a really shitty day.” This was followed with six “thumbs-up” emojis.

Below it was a message from Twitter stating: “VIOLATION FOUND. We looked @[this person’s] account for breaking our abusive behavior rule. We found they broke ourabusive behavior rule through different reports we received about their behavior. They can’t Tweet, Retweet, or Like content, and we’ll ask them to remove the reported content if they want to regain full access to their account. Your safety is important to us.” And so on.

I understand there was quite a flurry of tweets similar to this in response to the judgment – and there have been a few saying similar or worse things after I announced my intention to appeal and started raising funds for it.

So, after I published my most recent update, “Appeal against Rachel Riley libel judgment set to be filed next week”, I decided to pay attention to the responses it received. I was ill (my fifth cold since the start of September) and had little better to do. And I didn’t have to wait long.

“Rejection of appeal to be reached the day after, still good grift, well played,” tweeted an anonymous Twitter user, seven minutes later. This person provided no name or identifying image, was following just 69 people and had only eight followers, and had joined Twitter that month.

Notice the use of the word “grift”, echoing Rachel Riley’s assertion that I am a “grifter”, which is defined as “a person who engages in petty or smale-scale swindling”. There is no truth in such an allegation, of course – so you can draw your own conclusions about this person’s reason for being anonymous.

It’s classic “troll” behaviour, of course – leaving an insulting or offensive message in order to upset someone, get attention or cause trouble.

I decided to engage this person in conversation: “Why are you trying to tell me what I do? It can only be because you are trying to fool other readers into believing your nasty little story.”

The response indicates a willingness to twist words to create a false impression: “I’ve … not told you what to do, simp.” A “simp” is defined as a “silly or foolish person” and the use of that word is further demonstration that this person is a troll – the use of insults being intended to provoke an emotional, and possibly foolish, reaction.

The conversation continued, with me pointing out: “You have a vested interest in broadcasting untruths. Are you being paid for this? If so, by whom?”

This seemed to incense the troll who had launched an attack purely to get an emotional reaction from me: “Ooooh, are you intimating there’s a CONSPIRACY, Mikey?”

“Not at all. Asking if an anonymous troll is being paid to cast shade on a fundraiser for justice seems perfectly reasonable,” I replied.

Funny how these trolls hate being called out on the reasons for their deliberately-offensive behaviour. It is a reasonable question: why else would a complete stranger join Twitter anonymously to attack an attempt to secure justice? What does such a person have to hide?

You see, they can’t claim they need to be anonymous for their own protection because it is they who are deliberately trying to cause provocation; to upset me and to put people off contributing to the fund supporting my appeal.

So, why hide behind a fake name? There has to be a reason. Am I right?

There’s really only one way to combat behaviour like this – and that is to win the case. And the only way to do that is by having enough funding to pay for an appeal. That is, after all, the only reason these trolls are attacking me – to discourage you.

So, please help me foil them by doing any or several of the following:

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

Use other social media in the same way.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

Tomorrow I expect to see details of the appeal that my Counsel is writing, based on my own observations of the judgment and his expertise in law. No doubt its arrival will spur the trolls to new depths of absurdity.

Let’s give them a reason to think twice before they lower themselves further.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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