Doctor launches £200k libel claim against Kelvin MacKenzie’s Daily Mail column
Combative journalist Kelvin MacKenzie is facing a fresh battle, just a day after being ditched as a columnist for the Telegraph, after becoming embroiled in a fresh libel claim.
Dr Antonio Serrano, an NHS doctor, has filed a £200k case against MacKenzie over an April 2012 column in the Daily Mail which described the ‘living hell’ of one of his patients.
Serrano alleges that the article, headed ‘A whole year of hell, thanks to a foreign doctor’, had damaged his reputation and contained unfounded allegations such as he had an ‘inadequate grasp of the English language’.
The Daily Mail piece included a claim that local MP Amber Rudd had been ‘appalled’ at his treatment by Serrano when in fact she had told MacKenzie’s agent that she had no comment.
A 13-page claim form attests that MacKenzie’s article displayed ‘an irresponsible and insulting disregard for the reputation and feelings of the claimant, being more determined to publish another, follow-up story on his xenophobic theme of 'foreign doctors' than concerned with publishing a story that was either true or fair.’
In the piece MacKenzie said that he’d investigated the case to his satisfaction but will now have to defend himself in the High Court.