Gold18:

Golden Rule No 18:

The legal minefield

We are living in a litigious age in which people rush to the courts at the first sniff of a libel or a slander. Your publisher will have the services of a lawyer and your editor will be on the look out for anything that is slightly suspect, but libels slip through the net and the bottom line is that you, the author, are responsible.

You will usually find a clause tucked away in your contract that will say in legal language that the buck stops with you. If there is a matter that leads to court action, your Publisher and the Distributors will be covered by libel insurance, but this in many cases will not protect you.

There are insurances that you can take out, but the premiums and restrictions are high. I personally do not carry an insurance and have walked the legal tightrope for more than 40 years. I slipped off only once in the book world. Ghosting one of 17 books I have written in harness with that genius of a goal scorer, Jimmy Greaves, I had Jimmy stating the fact that a certain well-known international footballer could not play the game when it came to comparison with footballers from Jimmy's era.

We had to settle out of court for a few thousand pounds, but quickly enough to stop the lawyers lining their pockets. Remember that it is unlikely that you will be found guilty of libel if you are stating an opinion. But if you couch that opinion as fact you could be in trouble. Jimmy, with me putting the words into his mouth, said that the footballer could not play. That was a statement of fact. If I had written that "in my opinion" he could not play there would have been no comeback.

The only other time I have fallen foul of the libel lawyers was when, in a script for a 1999 boxing video, I got two boxers with the same surname mixed up. It cost me and my production partner, Brian Klein, a cool £30,000 because I typed 'Johnny' instead of 'Bobby' and showed action on the video that portrayed him in a bad light. Ouch.

When drawing characters and events in novels make sure you disguise anybody if you are leaning on known people for your background material. Be careful, and check and double check your facts. I see dozens of potential libel situations every week on the web where there are hundreds of amateur writers flashing around opinions as facts. Just wait until the lawyers start getting their acts together on the web. It is a legal minefield waiting to explode.

Be ultra careful when researching to make sure you are not lifting a libel from another source. Newspaper libraries have red alerts on articles that have been the source of libel actions. You have no such saftey net when searching, say, on the world wide web. The fact that you lifted a wrong fact from a reputable source is no defence if the matter goes to court.

I advise you to follow the age-old Fleet Street maxim: If in doubt, leave out.

Legal problems are almost as tough to take as rejections, as I explain in Rule No 19.

Golden Rule No 18 is to tread carefully when stating opinions on living people and on events. Do not turn your opinions into facts.