Media & Communications Law
UK Judge Wins Libel Suit Filed by Mom
Posted Dec 2, 2008, 08:52 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A part-time London judge who wrote a memoir about her troubled childhood has won a libel suit filed by her mother.
A jury ruled in favor of Judge Constance Briscoe and the company that published her 2006 autobiography, Ugly, report the Associated Press and Times Online. The book contended that Briscoe’s mother mistreated her physically and emotionally. Briscoe told jurors her mother beat her for bed-wetting, called her a “dirty little whore” and taunted her that she was ugly.
"I had a story to tell and that ... is that I, someone from dirt poverty, from absolutely nowhere, with absolutely no assistance whatever, having faced adversity at every turn, could come through," she testified.
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