The Fall of a Life Broker

Interesting story. I don’t know the life business at all, so I don’t know the company that is referred to here.

I recently had to do a lot of research in to UK libel laws – to see what you could and couldn’t say about someone without fear of an expensive law suit. I was fortunate to be given some free advice by corporate lawyers and also a Barrister.

There are two bits that I believe are relevant, so I will summarise what they told me as:

1. It doesn’t matter what you know to be true – you have to be able to prove to the court that what you said was true of the person/organisation.

2. If what you have said is about an identifyable group of people – then each person in that group potentially has a case against you for libel. The example given was that if you said ‘all of the Police at x station are crooked (not the word I was going to use!)’ – then each Officer working from that station could have a claim against you for libel, unless you could prove to the court that he or she was crooked.

So, I worry on your behalf as to whether:

1. Many people in the industry will know the company and the individuals that you are talking about – and hence the targets could claim that their reputation in their own industry is affected by what is written here.

2. Is everything that you’ve said true? – there’s some pretty strong allegations there…

It’s obvious to me that you are writing with probably very good intent – but that isn’t a defence to libel and so it would be shame if you were to suffer as a result.

Great post.

Well reasoned and obviously written from bitter experience.

What I can’t get a handle on is why the providers still give them access some pretty attractive productss, given the unsustainable claw-back levels?