San Leon Energy Share Discussion Threads

[linksdean2] 22/9/2017 09:13

Tone you and the others on lse need to read this as it has you all over it!!

Defamation and your not even a shareholder makes your court case a for gone conclusion of a guilty verdict!!

Defamation by shareholders

Posted on February 23, 2016 by Yair Cohen


How incredible it is that a single shareholder in a PLC can cause the company tremendous amounts of financial damage just by using Twitter and other social media. Defamation by shareholders, often disgruntled shareholders, against their own company, is one of the most irrational acts that we have seen in recent years.

In the case of the international gold mining company RRR and its shareholder Gary Carp, the consequences of Mr Carp posting defamation against the company were particularly serious to the company and to the thousands of investors who at one point saw the value of their shares plummeting very sharply.

The company was left with no choice but to issue legal proceedings against its shareholder in order to protect the interest of the rest of its shareholders who were being scared off by dangerous speculation and by highly defamatory conversations that Mr Carp initiated on various investors’ forums.

This was probably the first ever case in the UK of a PLC suing a shareholder over defamation on internet forums and on Twitter. The dilemma that the company faced, whether legal action for defamation against a shareholder would be viewed as a bullying act or whether it would be accepted as an act of protection, appreciated by other investors, was resolved very quickly when following the successful law suit, it received nothing but positive and encouraging feedback from its investors. The investors viewed the initiation of legal proceedings against their fellow shareholder as a demonstration of leadership by the company’s board of directors rather than an oppressive act and their confidence in the company grew.








Meet Gary. Gary was a small investor in listed public companies who held shares in a gold mining company RRR PLC. As an active investor, Gary used to be involved in online investment forums such as Interactive Investors.

For reasons only known to him, one day, Gary started to post defamatory posts about the company on a number of online investors’ forums. He also promoted his defamatory posts and speculative rumours via Twitter.



Over a number of weeks, Gary posted dozens of defamatory posts about the company, some of which created heated discussions about the accuracy and truthfulness of the posts, which was presumably what he had set out to do. After a while, Gary’s defamation against the company started to appear on the first page of Google search results. Even though he was a very small investor in a large gold mining company, the intensity of his comments was so high that some investors started to believe that the defamatory posts were actually true. This resulted in a decline in investment in the company and in a sharp reduction in the value of its shares.

Initially, the company took no action in relation to the defamation because the Board of Directors were yet to appreciate the potentially disproportionate damage that one small investor could cause a large PLC by posting defamatory comments on the internet. However, after they received numerous worrying messages from concerned investors, they were resolved to take action to save the company’s reputation.

It was important for the company to act immediately, yet delicately, due to the potential additional reputational damage that legal action against an investor could have caused. The company therefore chose Cohen Davis to handle the matter. Mainly, they chose us because of the unique and creative approach we take to handling online defamation matters of this nature and the due consideration and advice we give our clients in relation to reputational risks and reputational outcomes.

In these sorts of cases there is likely to be additional media interest, which needed to be handled delicately in order to protect the reputation of the company and to avoid negative publicity which could potentially result in a further decline in share prices. Eventually, we had no choice but to issue defamation proceedings against Gary in order to protect the investment of thousands of investors.

Gary accepted that all his allegations were unfounded, apologised and agreed to pay compensation which the company’s Chairman donated to a charitable cause. The lessons of this case to a company that suffers defamation on the internet are numerous: First, it is clear that a single investor can cause a huge amount of reputational and financial damage, even to a PLC, by posting untrue stories and unfounded speculations on the internet. Second, a PLC, despite its size, might become vulnerable to online defamation as much as a small, private limited company.

Third, the influence of online investment forums on individual and corporate investors must never be underestimated by companies of any size. Fourth, the cost of online defamation to a large, public company is likely to be far higher than it is to a small private company because it has much more to lose. And finally, the company’s board in this case did the right thing by instructing a niche law firm that specialises in online defamation and reputational law to handle this matter promptly and delicately from all angles.






Defamation by investors - defamation against a company

In a case that is believed to be the first of its kind in the UK concerning online defamation by investors against a company, online defamation and social media specialist solicitor firm Cohen Davis won damages for its PLC client, a gold mining company Red Rock Resources (RRR) after the company was defamed on social media by one of its small yet vocal investors.

The defamation by the investor against the company was so intense that some legitimate investors actually started to take the false allegations seriously and the matter began to attract a degree of undesirable social media attention on investors’ online forums.

Over a period of 3 weeks RRR and its lawyers tried to resolve the matter with the disgruntled investor amicably but after other investors started to complain about the potential fall in the value of their investment the company had no choice but to file a claim for libel in the High Court in London in order to protect the legistimate interests of its investors. The defaming shareholder, Gary Carp of London, admitted to have used Twitter, online investors’ forum Proactive Investors and email to spread defamation against the company. He agreed to avoid trial and pay the company undisclosed sum in damages, which the company donated to its charity.





To whom it might concern

‎“Since October last year I have sent a number of messages via email and on Twitter making a series ‎of allegations of wrongdoing, including criminal allegations, against Red Rock Resources PLC (RRR) ‎and Andrew Bell.‎ Based on assurances issued through their lawyers that Mr Bell, RRR and its Directors are innocent ‎of any wrong doing, which I accept, I wish to retract these statements.

I apologise unreservedly to ‎RRR, its directors (including Mr Bell), and its shareholders for any unwarranted damage I have ‎caused to RRR’s and Mr Bell’s reputation and for the upset and distress my allegations have ‎caused Mr Bell.

I have agreed to pay RRR and Mr Bell a significant sum in damages, which they have said they will ‎donate to the Build Africa charity working in Uganda and Kenya”‎

Mr Gary Carp