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	Why Top Judge Threw out Libel Case Involving Tolkien Family Birmingham Post January 26, 2009 http://www.birminghampost.net/birmingham-business/birmingham-business-news/ legal-business/2009/01/27/why-top-judge-threw-out-libel-case-involving-tolkien-family-65233-22784811/ The country's top libel judge has stepped into a bizarre case involving alleged child abuse, a Midland man, and the family of legendary fantasy author JRR Tolkien. Sir David Eady, possibly the most famous high court judge in the UK, was brought in to rule on the case of Christopher Carrie, who claims he was abused as a child by John Tolkien, a priest and scoutmaster, and son of the Lord of the Rings author. Mr Carrie was trying to sue Royd Tolkien, one of the writer's great-grandsons and a bit-part actor in one of the massively successful Lord of the Rings films, over comments made on a website. Mr Carrie had set up the website under an anonymous name to promote the book he had written about his boyhood experiences. But comments were later made on the site under the name of Royd Tolkien. The comments allegedly made defamatory allegations about Mr Carrie, and he responded under his own name saying he would take legal action. Royd Tolkien denies making any comments on Mr Carrie's website. When the case reached the high court in December last year, it was rejected by libel expert Mr Justice Eady because of changes to the details sent to Royd Tolkien and his legal team. The documents sent by Mr Carrie originally referred to comments made on a website run by Royd Tolkien for his job as a literary agent. The details were only later changed to refer to Mr Carrie's blog. Lawyers from Best & Soames, acting for Royd Tolkien, said this meant that the case should be rejected by the court. Mr Justice Eady agreed, saying there was no need to discuss the matter any further. But he went on to say he would not have accepted a libel case anyway – because the comments about Mr Carrie had been published on his own website, and so he could have taken them off whenever he wanted. The fact that Mr Carrie was behind the website only came out in the build-up to the court case. He had previously posted entries on the website under the name "gggollum". Mr Justice Eady said he did not see how someone could be libelled on their own website if they had the power to remove comments – and that leaving them up, as Mr Carrie did, was tantamount to agreeing to the comments being published. In the summing-up of the case, referring to Mr Carrie's explanation for changing the submission, he said: "Nothing in the reply can serve to undermine the basic fact that [Mr Carrie] has acquiesced in the continuing publications since the original date of publication. "Thus it is said that there is no realistic prospect of any jury, being properly directed, coming to any other conclusion other than that [Carrie] consented to and acquiesced in all such subsequent publications. That is in my judgment plainly correct." He said there was no law that said something being on the internet counted as the "substantial publication" needed to base a libel case on, adding: "It will not suffice merely to plead that the posting has been accessed 'by a large but unquantifiable number of readers'." Mr Carrie set up the website to promote a book titled Klone'it – an anagram of Tolkien – which he had written about his childhood in Birmingham. The comments on the websites relate to a dispute going on since allegations of abuse were made by Mr Carrie and others against John Tolkien about five years ago. The allegations were made about John Tolkien's conduct when he was a priest and scoutmaster in Birmingham in the 1950s. Father John Tolkien was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1946 and started work the same year at St Mary's Church in Coventry. In 1950, he became curate of the Church of the English Martyrs in Sparkhill, where he stayed until 1957. He moved to Knutton in Staffordshire until 1966 and then Hartshill, also in Staffordshire, where he remained until 1987. From then, until 1994 when he retired, he was parish priest at Eynsham in Oxfordshire. Mr Carrie alleges he was sexually assaulted by the priest on three occasions after he joined the 159th Martyrs Scout Group aged 10 in the early 1950s. Police were told about the alleged abuse in 2002, a year before Fr Tolkien died. At the time the CPS decided not to go ahead, saying it was not in the public interest to go ahead, given the state of his health. The priest died in January 2003 at the age of 85. His family has always strenuously denied the child abuse allegations. Mr Carrie later went on to bring a civil action against the Catholic Church in Birmingham, saying it had breached its duty of care to him. The church later reached an out-of-court settlement with the former boy scout that saw it award Mr Carrie £15,000 in compensation with no admission of liability.
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