If the BBC doesn’t meet all of Donald Trump’s demands, which we listed in the post below this one, he could file a $1bn lawsuit in Florida.<\/p>\n
His legal team have said today that the president hasn’t filed a lawsuit yet. The deadline for the president’s demands to be met is tomorrow, 10pm (UK time).<\/p>\n
But how likely would a lawsuit be to succeed if it were filed?<\/p>\n
A potential case against the broadcaster could hinge on whether anyone in Florida watched it online and felt misled.<\/p>\n
If that hurdle is cleared, a US court would need to decide whether the BBC intentionally deceived viewers.<\/p>\n
Legal experts told Reuters what Trump would need to prove and how the BBC could defend itself.<\/p>\n
Trump can’t sue in the UK<\/p>\n
UK law requires defamation cases to be filed within a year of a statement’s publication, which has already passed for the October 2024 documentary.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The upper limit for libel damages in the UK is about \u00a3350,000, while US payouts have reached as much as $1.4bn.<\/p>\n
It is not uncommon for US plaintiffs to file eye-popping damages claims as a play for leverage or an opening bid for settlement talks, legal experts said.<\/p>\n
Can Trump sue in the US?<\/p>\n
Trump’s lawyers have suggested he would sue in Florida, where he has legal residency, meaning a court there would need to decide it has jurisdiction over the case, else it would be dismissed.<\/p>\n
Legal experts say this means Trump’s lawyers may need to establish that the BBC has actively sought to establish a presence in the state and that Floridians watched the Panorama documentary and felt deceived by it.<\/p>\n
The documentary was not broadcast in the US but was available until recently on the BBC’s online streaming platform.<\/p>\n
The broadcaster has offices in Los Angeles and New York, and it has been sued before in Florida’s federal court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What would Trump need to prove?<\/p>\n
Public figures in the US face steep hurdles in defamation cases.<\/p>\n
They must prove a statement was false, defamatory and that a defendant knew it was false or recklessly disregarded the truth.<\/p>\n
Trump’s lawyers likely would ask the BBC if there are internal communications showing that red flags were ignored or that BBC journalists intended to mislead viewers, legal experts said.<\/p>\n
He could rely on a leaked internal BBC memo, written by an ethics and standards adviser, which raised concerns about systemic bias at the broadcaster in favour of the political left.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How could the BBC defend itself?<\/p>\n
The US Constitution\u00a0gives the press some of the world’s strongest legal protections against defamation claims, which the BBC would benefit from.<\/p>\n
Florida state law also allows defendants to swiftly dismiss defamation lawsuits that have no merit or are brought to retaliate against legally protected speech.<\/p>\n
The broadcaster could argue that the documentary was substantially true and that its editing decisions did not create a false impression, legal experts said.<\/p>\n
It could also claim the programme did not damage Trump’s reputation, despite the US president’s claim it\u00a0caused him “overwhelming reputational and financial harm”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the BBC doesn’t meet all of Donald Trump’s demands, which we listed in the post below this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-138353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}