Armstrong v Times Newspapers Ltd

Facts

Mr Lance Armstrong, the internationally renowned cyclist who by June 2004 had won the Tour de France five years in succession from 1999 to 2003, sued Times Newspapers Limited, publishers of The Sunday Times, together with David Walsh, the newspaper's Chief Sports Writer, and Alan English, its Deputy Sports Editor, for libel. The claim, for damages and an injunction, concerned a full-page article published in the Sports section of The Sunday Times for 13 June 2004 under the headline "LA - CONFIDENTIAL", which trailed a forthcoming book co-written by Mr Walsh and a French journalist, Mr Ballester, entitled "LA Confidential - The Secrets of Lance Armstrong". The article, running to thirty-four paragraphs and accompanied by photographs of Mr Armstrong, Mr Walsh, a former Motorola team-mate Stephen Swart and the Italian cycling doctor Michele Ferrari, raised questions about drug taking in professional cycling and about EPO in particular. Mr Armstrong pleaded that the words meant that, contrary to his denials, he had taken performance-enhancing drugs and was thereby a fraud, a cheat and a liar. The defendants denied that meaning and pleaded justification of a lesser meaning of reasonable grounds to suspect. Eady J ordered by consent on 7 December 2005 that meaning be tried as a preliminary issue by judge alone.