Developers Lose €6million Libel Battle

Developers Lose €6million Libel Battle

LAST UPDATED: 20 November, 2010 @ 9:53 pm
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LOS MERINOS: Developers lose libel battle

LOS MERINOS: Developers lose libel battle

DEVELOPERS behind Ronda’s controversial Los Merinos golf course have lost a six-million euro libel battle.

The bosses behind the double golf course scheme took online magazine el Observador to court over a series of articles on the case over the last few years.

Company JM Legion Espanola claimed that the environmental website and its owner Juan Area deliberately wrote defamatory and damaging articles about the 800-home scheme, that sits in Unesco-protected virgin woodland, near Ronda.

But the judge at Malaga’s court number four threw out the case for the second time, saying that the website had no case to answer for.

The developers had previously sued up to a dozen opponents to the scheme, including three expatriates for seven million euros each for daring to speak out against the scheme.

In a string of cases they accused the campaigners of “slander, coercion, intimidation and threats.”

One of those sued, writer Alastair Boyd, aka Lord Kilmarnock, who died last year, merely told the Olive Press that he believed that golf courses were “not sustainable”.

All of the cases have been thrown out of court or archived.

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