As the two stories below confirm. taking on Express Newspapers and getting half million pound payout, plus costs, may seem sweet at the time, with Champagne corks popping, but there is always a nasty sting in the tail. In Lord Archer's case, four years for perjury AND a £2.2M demand from Express Newspapers for their money back, with interest!
Archer wins record £500,000 damages
Andrew Rawnsleyguardian.co.uk,
Saturday July 25 1987
Article historyAbout this article
CloseThis article was first published on
guardian.co.uk on Saturday July 25 1987. It was last updated at 17:11 on July 19 2001.Mr Jeffrey Archer was yesterday awarded record libel damages of £500,000 and more still in costs from the Star newspaper for accusing him of paying a prostitute for sex.
With costs of the three-week High Court trial estimated at £700,000, the Star 's front-page story published last November will cost its owners, Express Newspapers more than £1 million.
The former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party had told the jury he was a fool for paying £ 2,000 to the prostitute, Monica Coghlan, but not a liar when he denied ever sleeping with her.
After shaking each of the jurors by the hand, Mr Archer left the court saying the 'verdict speaks for itself. ' He was silent on his future political ambitions, nor would he comment on how he intends to spend the £500,000 which is tax-free.
Mr Archer is understood to have an arrangement with a Sunday newspaper for his account of the three-week trial.
The News of the World said it would still be defending Mr Archer 's further action against it for its story which first linked him with Miss Coghlan and which led to his resignation.
The paper's lawyers are, however, thought to be pressing for an out-of-court settlement following an admission to the Star libel jury by the paper's former editor, Mr David Montgomery, that his story had also implied that Mr Archer and Miss Coghlan had sex.
Mrs Mary Archer , who sat alongside her husband throughout the trial, said she was 'grateful and delighted. '
The Star 's editor, Mr Lloyd Turner labelled in court 'the silent editor' for his decision not to appear in the witness box in defence of his article - would only say that Express Newspapers would be appealing.
The judge, Mr Justice Caulfield had earlier been forced to recall the jury after admitting to 12 'inaccuracies and mistakes' in his summing-up following submissions by the Star 's counsel, Mr Michael Hill QC.
The jury of eight men and four women, returned to the jurors' room after a recall regarded as extraordinary by lawyers, took just over four hours to find in Mr Archer 's favour.
His counsel, Mr Robert Alexander QC had demanded 'enormous damages' for the Star story, which he described as 'the gravest, most ruthless libel of modern times' for branding Mr Archer not only as a user of a prostitute specialising in 'kinky sex,' but a liar for denying it afterwards.
Though the £500,000 does not quite match the cost of 'all the tea in China' suggested by Mr Alexander, it is a record for British libel damages. The previous record was set six weeks ago, when damages of £450,000 were awarded to a former Royal Navy officer, Lieutenant Commander Martin Packard, against a Greek newspaper.
The costs of the three-week trial, estimated at up to £700,000, are also thought to be a record for the length of hearing. The most expensive action was the £1.2 million in costs paid by the BBC after an action brought by a Harley Street slimming specialist, Dr Sidney Gee, in 1985. That hearing lasted six months.
Mr Justice Caulfield called for 'dignity' in the courtroom as gasps and muted cheers greeted the jury's verdict. He told them they had carried an 'enormous burden' over the last three weeks and would be excused from jury service for 15 years.
He refused an application by Mr Hill for a stay on payment pending appeal. The Star was also injuncted not to repeat the libel.
After the millionaire novelist lingered for a few minutes to sign autographs, the Archers forced their way out of the melee of reporters and members of public in court for the most publicised libel action since Liberace sued the Daily Mirror in 1959.
Mrs Archer said they would be going home for a weekend to Granchester, near Cambridge, to rest and celebrate. 'We might,' she said, 'open a bottle of champagne. '
BUT THEN.....Justice can be slow but arrives in the end...The Prostitute says yes I maybe a prostitute but I am not a liar, like him. How said that she was killed just before the trial, when a robber ran into her car..
The end: Archer goes to jail By Sue Clough, Courts Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:59am BST 20/07/2001
Page 1 of 2
THE roller-coaster career of Jeffrey Archer, politician, failed businessman and millionaire novelist, came to a dramatic halt yesterday when he was jailed for four years for lies he told in his libel action 14 years ago.
After four days of deliberation, an Old Bailey jury convicted him unanimously of two charges of perjury and two of perverting the course of justice.
He will initially serve his sentence at the high-security Belmarsh prison in south-east London. The judge, Mr Justice Potts, said the case was "the most serious offence of perjury I have experienced" and that he must serve at least two years.
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In the libel trial, Archer won a record £500,000 from the Daily Star over allegations that he slept with Monica Coghlan, a prostitute "willing to engage in perverted sexual practices".
Yesterday the judge told him that if the libel jury had seen the evidence he had seen, "it is unlikely in the extreme you would have succeeded".
The paper is demanding its money back, with damages and interest, totalling £2.2 million. The News of the World, which settled a separate libel action, is seeking repayment of £500,000. These demands, with Archer's own legal costs, could bring his total bill to more than £4 million.
The judge appeared to question the evidence of Lady Archer, who accompanied her husband to court, as she had done throughout.
As Nicholas Purnell, QC, pleading for Archer's freedom, said that his client had not compounded any lies told 14 years ago by evidence in the trial, the judge said: "What about the evidence of Lady Archer?"
Police said later that they were considering whether to investigate Lady Archer's evidence.
When the four guilty verdicts were given by the jury of six men and five women at 12.20pm, there were cries of "yes" from the public gallery. Archer and his wife remained motionless.
He was cleared of a further charge of perverting the course of justice. His co-defendant, Ted Francis, a film producer, was acquitted of the one charge he faced: of perverting the course of justice by
providing a false alibi for Archer for the night it was at one point said he had a £70 sex session with Miss Coghlan in a London hotel room.
The judge said that Archer had been convicted on clear evidence. "Sentencing you, Lord Archer, gives me no pleasure at all, I can assure you. It has been an extremely distasteful case.
"The fact is that in January 1987 you set out dishonestly to manipulate the proceedings that you had chosen to institute against the Star."
It was
Archer's ambition to be the first mayor of London that led to his conviction. Francis, an old friend with whom he had fallen out, went to the News of the World after the former Conservative deputy chairman had been selected as the party's candidate in the mayoral election.
He told the paper that he had constructed a false alibi for him for the night in September 1986 that it was at first suggested he had been with Coghlan.
In its front-page story published last November, the Star had alleged that Mr Archer paid Miss Coghlan £50 for sex and £20 for 'extra time' during a 15-minute session in a Mayfair hotel.
It appeared five days after the first story that Mr Archer had paid Miss Coghlan £2,000 for a trip abroad had appeared in the News of the World under the headline 'Tory boss Archer pays off vice girl,' and after categoric denials from Mr Archer that he had either met or slept with Miss Coghlan.
In court, he told the jury that he was an 'honourable fool' who had been duped by Miss Coghlan into paying the money out of compassion and the victim of an elaborate set-up by the News of the World.
She had led him to believe that by sending her abroad he would be able to 'nail the lie' that they had ever had sex together.
Five days after his resignation, the Star had compounded the libel under the headline 'Poor Jeffrey: vice-girl Monica speaks: Archer the man I knew. ' It was designed, his counsel had told the jury, as 'the killer blow' to wipe out any further chances Mr Archer might have had of political office. He had demanded damages which would 'stamp on it' and 'strike a blow for a cleaner press. '
By their verdict, counsel had told the jury, they could determine Mr Archer 's political future.
Despite yesterday's verdict, the prospects of any return to an official post in the Conservative Party are thought to be very remote.
But the publicity of the trial is likely to have guaranteed bigger audiences yet both for Mr Archer 's cheerleading tour of the constituencies and for his books.
He had originally agreed to this because he thought he was covering up a dinner date that Archer was keeping with his then mistress, Andrina Colquhoun. He realised only much later that the alibi was for the libel trial.
Archer promised in return a £20,000 loan to help pay for a film Francis was hoping to make. The relationship between the two men cooled when, at one of Archer's vaunted Krug and shepherd's pie parties at his penthouse on the Embankment, he told another guest in Francis's hearing: "You want to watch this fellow. I lent him £20,000 and I'm still waiting for it to come back."
At the libel trial, Francis's alibi was not needed in the end because of a mix-up over the dates of the sexual encounter.
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Instead, Terence Baker, Archer's agent, who has since died, said he had met the peer by chance on the crucial night and they had talked until well after the time the Star claimed that he had picked up Miss Coghlan in Shepherd Market.
The criminal case
revolved around a diary kept by Angela Peppiatt, Archer's personal assistant. Because Mrs Peppiatt's genuine diary of appointments listed a meeting with Mr Baker for the next night, Archer ordered her to make new entries in a blank diary.
It was this diary which was used in the libel case. It has since disappeared. Worried about the dishonesty her employer had involved her in, Mrs Peppiatt
kept her genuine diary as "an insurance" and handed it to police in 1999.
During seven days in the witness box, Mrs Peppiatt was accused by Mr Purnell of
faking the diary to cover up that she was fiddling her expenses. This she angrily denied.
It was Lady Archer's
evidence about the diary that was questioned by the judge. She said she remembered the main office diary for 1986 being of A4 size, whereas Mrs Peppiatt and another witness said it was smaller.
Archer's involvement of Mrs Peppiatt drew particular criticism from the judge. He had drawn her in knowing that she had suffered a broken marriage and had children to support, he said.
He ordered Archer, who will be able to retake his seat in the Lords when he is freed, to pay £175,000 towards prosecution costs with an extra year's jail in default.
Lady Archer left the Old Bailey with her sons William, 29, and James, 27, without comment. But Tony Morton-Hooper, her husband's solicitor, said: "Lord Archer and his family are shocked and disappointed. We shall be lodging an appeal."
Miss Coghlan, who
was killed shortly before the trial when a robber crashed into her car, always maintained that the sex session Archer denied had taken place.
She said: "I want him to suffer like I have suffered; I want him to squirm. But most of all I want him to tell the truth. I have never denied what I was; I was a prostitute. But I wasn't a liar. He is."
The above pic emailed to me by a friend was apparently taken on 19 May, just sixteen days after Madeleine disappeared. One might query what Gerry is laughing so happily about? I do not know what others think but the one child in the pushchair does not look like Sean or Amelie and I cannot imagine why Kate is fiddling with the hair of the sleeping child, other than her picture was being taken? Does anyone know who this child is?
