Help any legal beagles out there or anyone with similar experience

[Tenalady]

I have a very old friend from my childhood who's wife is saying that we are having an affair. Cant go into too much detail but it isnt true. She is now posting to everyone on FB with the same surname, which a lot is my family and I wondered if there is a way of legally stopping her from causing so much damage. My DH will go into a coma if this doesnt stop soon he is so sensitive.

Although, on further consideration, perhaps an offence under the Communications Act or some other similar legislation? Can't remember off the top of my head, there could be other such statutory offences?

They tend to act if someone's abusing their site like this. I can't say 100% that they will but it's worth a shot. She sounds deeply distressed, it's worth your while going to the CAB for further advice or seeing a solicitor. They can apply for the equivalent of a restraining order which will make it a criminal matter if she continues with her current behaviour.

I'm a law graduate, I'm not sure if this makes me a lawyer though as I don't practice.

I see I am not the only one that thinks this could be criminal in some way...

I agree that she could threaten her with taking action smallwhitecat. This may work.

However, re the issue of criminal charges harrasment or otherwise. Think about the issue at the heart of this, ie an allegation about sexual relations. Fgs, the police and CPS regularly decide that they are not going to prosecute serious rapes because of a lack of evidence. Do you honestly think that they would spend resources on trying to unravel the truth or otherwise as to who has been sleeping with whom allegations as posted on facebook?

It wouldn't be about the truth of the allegations...wouldn't be about the fact of whether the victim had been harassed or not!

wouldn't it*

OK. I will admit I am NOT a CRIMINAL lawyer. Iirc yes, harrassment is subjective but the Police will want to look at the substantive issue. They will NOT prosecute this case.

PLEASE don't make me wake DP up criminal barrister of 20 years standing He hates me clicking on these threads and then waking him up for a second opinion...

Let this be a lesson to you OP.

If you get two lawyers arguing the toss they will always disagree. This is fine on Mumsnet but if you litigate, these arguments will cost you money

I feel like you just want to be right..so yes you are very right..no matter what you say!

smallwhitecat. Lawyers are supposed to have much thicker skin than that

smallwhitecat...I am glad you feel the same...:)

Leo4. That is the first lesson of being a lawyer

I think you are quite childish tbh and I am probably quite a lot younger than you !

No, the first lesson is - make sure the client can afford your services!

2 pages of posts and the word injunction has been used only once. That's essentially what you'd need to get for the material to be removed and the person stopped from posting anything more on FB.

But legal aid is not available for it and you would have to pay privately for it to be done.

I doubt very much the police would be interested in this as is mentioned earlier on.

Actually I advised that the OP should approach a civil specialist. That's exactly the advice I would then expect them to give the OP.

Do you get civil specialists? I thought you had to specialise in a particular area of law to call yourself a specialist? Civil law is huge! Not sure how many folk could specialise in every aspect of civil law....although I am in Scotland and it may be different down South?!

I dealt with this sort of thing in my civil seat when I was a trainee. Injunction is the way to go, harassment is barking up the wrong tree. We tended to run the other way when we got new enquiries of this nature. Funding is always an issue. Clients tend not to want to spend huge sums of money to silence people unless they're rich and famous.

When I worked for a high street firm many moons ago they had a team of 'civil' specialists who dealt with a wide range of matters. Personally I wouldn't have done their job for a gold clock because they seemed to get all the complicated shit nobody else knew what to do with had to have a broad range of knowledge. The often got little disputes of this type and were pretty competent. I assume these people/departments still exist.

K999 yes we do. It's called Dispute Resolution these days. It basically covers everything from contested probate to property to trusts, to debt claims, etc. But civil lawyers will have their own specialties and you can't possibly specialise in every area of civil law as it's huge.

In my DR seat on my training contract we would run away screaming from this sort of case: people saying things on FB.

An interesting case....

www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/2006/40.html