Can you be sued for posting a bad review? It not only happened in England, but triggered a delicious scandal as well, one involving a distinguished historian, his barrister wife, a couple of historian rivals, Josef Stalin and amazon.co.uk.

In the eye of the storm is historian Orlando Figes, who anonymously posted on amazon hatchet jobs on two books by historians working in the same academic discipline as Figes, modern Russian history.

He described one book as ”dense” and ”pretentious” and ”the sort of book that makes you wonder why it was ever published”. The other book he termed “awful.”  He did however heap praise on one book, The Whisperers: Private life in Stalin’s Russia. The author of The Whisperers was…himself.

As the identity of the hatchet-wielder began to focus on Figes, his wife – a barrister and Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge – initially claimed that she herself had written the reviews. As the spotlight shifted to Figes himself he started rattling the sword of litigation at the press and academic colleagues to scare them off the trail. The ploy did not work. Now he is not only dining on humble pie but will pay damages and costs to the author victims of his nasty reviews.

The question nags: what exactly did Figes do that was wrong? He was nasty, mean-spirited, petty, jealous, truculent and craven (he blamed his conduct on depression caused by “immersion in Stalin’s crimes while researching his book,” said one report). Now, we are not lawyers – solicitors as they call them in England – but as ugly as Figes’ transgressions are, none of them is illegal as far as we know.  Indeed, if all the malicious anonymous reviewers were sued for libel our court system would break under the weight of ligitation.

Obviously the laws in UK are different from America’s. We know this to be true in the matter of “libel tourism” about which we have written here. (See Can’t Sue for Libel in US?  Take Your Beef to Britain, Libel Capital of the World.) The issue seems to be anonymous malice (is there a lawyer in the house to help us out?) The charges can be inferred by the apologies he made to the authors and pledges that Figes made to the court: “He also gave an undertaking not to repeat the allegations, not to post pseudonymous reviews of their works, and not to use fraud, subterfuge or unlawful means to attack or damage [the authors] in their professional capacity.”

Whatever law was invoked, Figes was required to pay damages plus legal costs.

In the absence of a solid legal opinion we can only draw this moral from the shabby case of Orlando Figes: If you’re going to be malicious, do it under your real name.

For further details read Orlando Figes agrees to pay damages over negative Amazon reviews and The TLS, Orlando Figes and the law

Richard Curtis