Chatter successfully sued for libel

An UK women who made false sexual allegations against a UKIP parliamentary candidate in chat room has become the first person in a British chat room to be successfully sued for libel.

Tracy Williams was ordered yesterday to pay £10,000 damages to Michael Keith Smith and issued with a High Court restraining order banning her from abusing him further on any website.

After being falsely accused of being a sex offender and a "racist bigot," Smith sued, claiming that Williams had used an alias to make serious and false accusations against him.

Judge Alistair MacDuff, QC, said, "The published statements, upon which reliance is placed, are clearly seriously defamatory. These statements have been made to a restricted audience and it is likely that few people have read these statements. But they were available to the whole world, or at least to the part of the world that has access to a computer and knows how to go on the internet."