is back in court today for the start of his libel trial after calling three stars in the public eye ‘paedophiles’, and arrived holding hands with a woman.
The former GB News presenter, who was , was seen looking solemn as he arrived at the Royal Courts of Justice in on Wednesday. However, he wasn’t alone and held hands with Elite Thinking Club podcast host Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Barker as they walked into the building.
The legal row stems from an argument on Twitter in October 2020 between the former Lewis actor, ex-Stonewall trustee Simon Blake, Coronation Street actress Nicola Thorp and star Crystal, also known as Colin Seymour.
During the online exchange, while also branding Thorp a ‘paedophile’ in a separate tweet.
He was being sued by all three figures but is also following his comments about Sainsbury’s decision to celebrate Black History Month.
At the time, Fox said he would boycott the supermarket over their ‘racial segregation and discrimination.’
In April 2022, Fox’s lawyers made the unusual move of asking for his defamation case to be decided by a jury as opposed to a judge.
During the previous hearing, his lawyer Alexandra Marzec stated that the actor was counter-suing to ‘clear his name from the false slur’ of being called racist.
Ms Marzec said that a jury would be better at reaching fair verdicts ‘in light of the cultural and social context of this case’.
She continued: ‘On a question like this, “what is a racist?”, a judge is not helped by knowledge of the law, or being a sKi**ed jurist or even high intellectual capacity. He or she is assisted by his or her own life experience and knowledge of the English language.’
The barrister said the jury was also more likely to be diverse than a single High Court judge.
Ms Marzec said that a diverse jury would mean the decision would be ‘incapable of being undermined on the lazy basis that a white judge sided with a white man who denied being racist’.
In a written judgement, Ms Marzec wrote that Fox’s three tweets were not intended ‘or received or understood by anyone as a factual statement that any of the claimants were in fact “paedophiles”’.
Further explaining their request for a jury, she later argued that judges could be subject to ‘involuntary bias’, as a Judicial College document on equal treatment has an ‘ideological’ definition of racism.
However, Heather Rogers QC, for the trio, disputed this claim.
She said: ‘It’s such a bad argument…. It is a guidance as to how you treat people in court, it is not the law.’
The barrister added in written submissions that they ‘can see no good reason for the court to order jury trial in this case’.
‘There is nothing in this,’ she stated.
However, Mr Justice Nicklin later denied Fox’s request for a jury trial and said in his written judgment: ‘The defendant has not satisfied me that a fair-minded and informed observer would conclude that there was a real possibility that a judge trying this case alone would suffer from “involuntary bias”.’
Fox previously addressed his tweets in an episode of Jeremy Vine, and said: ‘It was in response, possibly, to 10 months now of being called a racist by people on Twitter, which I think is a career-ending slur, actually, and I find very hurtful.
‘If the point is that words mean nothing, seeing as it’s a totally baseless allegation and is entirely in opposition to what my feelings are, I thought, you know what, if words meaning nothing nowadays, I can call you anything I want in return.
‘Was it my finest hour? No.’
The trial is scheduled to last a week and Fox is expected to give evidence.
