David Eady Appeal for his conduct during the 2009 libel case involving Richard Desmond and Tom Bower. Eady disallowed several pieces of evidence against Desmond which the Appeal Court ruled were clearly relevant to the case. The Court of Appeal judges ruled that Eady's decision was "plainly wrong" and "might lead to a miscarriage of justice". After hearing the evidence, the jury found in favour of Bower. In December 2009, Eady commented in "The Guardian" on some of this criticism, saying that "The media have nowhere to vent their frustrations other than through personal abuse of the particular judge who happens to
Criminal libel The common law offences of seditious libel, defamatory libel, and obscene libel were abolished in England and Wales and Northern Ireland on 12 January 2010 when section 73 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 came into force, blasphemous libel having already been abolished in England and Wales on 8 July 2008 by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 created instead the offence of inciting hatred against a person on the grounds of their race or religion. Samoa's Crimes Act 2013 dropped reference to criminal libel, which had been on the statute