High Court throws out Swiss lawyer’s libel claim over Wikipedia page

The High Court has dismissed an order allowing a Swiss lawyer to bring a libel claim against Wikimedia in England and Wales.

Matthew Parish was granted an order to serve Wikimedia Foundation Inc out of the jurisdiction with a claim for libel centered on an article about Parish which was published on a Wikipedia page. The article covered his forgery conviction in Geneva, Switzerland, following a trial in 2021. He was sentenced to three years imprisonment and prohibited from practising law in Switzerland for five years.

Wikimedia made an application to set aside the order on the grounds that Parish’s claim had no real prospect of success; England was not the most appropriate forum and Parish ‘failed to comply with the duty of full and frank disclosure’.

Granting the application, Mrs Justice Steyn said that though Parish’s ‘professional reputation may be global, it is clear that he is most well-known in Switzerland’ and she was ‘not persuaded that England is clearly the most appropriate forum for the claim’.

Finding Parish had failed to satisfy the forum Test, the judge said the facts underlying the statements complained of ‘have nothing to do with England’.

She added: ‘They relate to the claimant’s conduct in Switzerland and decisions of the Swiss criminal courts. If the truth of those statements is in issue, as appears to be the case, all the material documents and witnesses are likely to be in Switzerland.

‘Having practised law for much of his professional life in Switzerland, and having instructed lawyers in Switzerland in relation to the criminal proceedings, the claimant is at least as well able to pursue proceedings in Switzerland as in this jurisdiction, where he does not appear to have practised.’

The judgment said Parish made ‘egregious breaches of the duty of full and frank disclosure’ including that he had lived and worked abroad for the past two decades and his ‘extensive connections’ with Switzerland which ‘resulted in the court being misled’.

It said: ‘This is not a case in which the claimant has explained or apologised for his failure to comply with the duty of full and frank disclosure. I have already found that permission to serve out should be set aside as England is not clearly the most appropriate jurisdiction in which to bring the claim. But I also conclude that the highly material non-disclosures by the claimant would, independently, have required the order to be set aside.’

The order granting Parish permission to serve the claim on Wikimedia was set aside and the claim dismissed.

Matthew Thomas Parish appeared in person. Ian Helme, instructed by Bird & Bird, appeared for Wikimedia Foundation Inc.