Legal question relating to UK

I assume you're talking about England?

Actually libel and slander apply there; in Scotland defamation of character is the umbrella term but I'm not sure about time limits.

As for Wales or N. Ireland, not sure about those.

I found this on one of my hubby's clients websites ( they are solicitors)

Claims for defamation can only be made in the High Court. Claims can be made for compensation or for an order to stop the perpetrator from repeating the allegations. There are strict time limits for starting court action. There is a time limit of twelve months for taking legal action for libel, slander or malicious falsehood. This time limit runs from the date the defamatory statement was made. The courts may have some discretion to extend this in specific circumstances, so individual advice should always be sought.

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In the UK law, it deliberately says 'no such action shall be brought after the expiration of one year from the date on which the cause of action accrued.' Note that date of the 'cause of action' isn't necessarily the date where the nasty words were written! For example, if I publish a book with nasty statements in them, the clock can start when the book is publically available ... not necessarily the 'publication date' where it had extremely limited circulation, or the time the statement originally uttered or written.

There is also a massive exception if 'one of the reasons for the delay was that all or any of the facts relevant to the cause of action did not become known to the plaintiff until after the end of the period' ... so you can't hope they didn't know about the lies until it is too late.

In the US, the clock has also restarted when books crossed state lines, etc, as well.

Good luck !

Mac

Recently, there's been a lot of attention paid to "libel tourism" in the UK - the habit of some wealthy plaintiffs (or plaintiffs with wealthy backers) of suing journalists and academics for libel in the UK because they feel the environment is favorable...even if the UK connection is tenuous.