24th November 2014

Our Reputation Protection team secured a significant win for actor Tom Ellis against The Sunday Mirror earlier this month. The paper was required to apologise and pay substantial damages to our client after it wrongly claimed that he had been in a “bitter battle” with his ex-wife over child support payments.

Associate Leo Dawkins read a Statement in Open Court on 6th November which stated that the 13 July story claimed that Mr Ellis had “deliberately sought to shirk his responsibility to pay child maintenance for his two daughters” with his former wife, actress Tamzin Outhwaite, The article claimed he was “too cash strapped to do so, and that this had forced his ex-wife to threaten him with lawyers to ensure that he met his obligations as a father”.

The statement continued:

“To have such defamatory allegations published in a national newspaper was deeply upsetting for my client. His distress was compounded by the fact that, as is obvious, the financial arrangements regarding his children are private.

As the Defendant has now admitted, there was also no truth in the story. There had been no such row between my client and his ex-wife, bitter or otherwise. Whilst details of the childcare arrangements are, as I say, private, Mr Ellis has in fact never failed to pay his share of child maintenance, nor has he ever claimed that he could not afford to do so.

It is for that reason that he instructed me to commence this action against the Defendant and I am pleased to be able to confirm that MGN Limited now accepts that the allegations it made were false.

It has agreed to join in the reading of this statement in an effort to set the record straight. It has also agreed not to repeat the allegations complained of, and has also agreed to pay him substantial damages as well as legal costs.

We have also won apologies and substantial damages from the Mail Online and Daily Express for our client after they ran similar stories.”