Dr James Miller (left) has won £20,000 from Andrew Peake (right) (Pictures: Champion News)
A parish councillor has been fined £20,000 for libel after accusing the village clerk of giving him the ‘finger’ during a council meeting.
Councillor Andrew Peake, 60, was sued by Dr James Miller, the clerk of his rural Norfolk council, after a campaign of online abuse in which he branded Dr Miller a ‘dishonest, scheming, devious and threatening liar.’
The disagreement between the two members of Fleggburgh parish council, a small village close to Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, blew up after claims were made on Mr Peake’s ‘Fleggburgh Eye’ Facebook page.
On the page, he wrote that his claims against Dr Miller – a Cambridge-educated academic – were truthful, accusing him among other things of secretly giving him ‘the finger’ during a council meeting.
Mr Peak has now been told to pay £20,000 in libel damages to Dr Miller, 60, after Judge Richard Parkes KC found he had not proved any of his defamatory online statements were true.
The judge said Dr Miller’s ‘middle finger’ couldn’t be proven as an ‘offensive gesture’, adding that the village drama was ‘stoked by the ill-advised use of social media.’
Dr Miller will be paid £20,000 in compensation (Picture: Champion News)
Cambridge-educated economist Dr Miller, worked as clerk to the council from 2019 to 2021, and engineer Mr Peake was a councillor until he resigned in April 2021.
Peake’s Facebook page, called ‘Fleggburgh Eye’, was initially called ‘Andrew Peake of Fleggburgh’. For a nine month period, the posts complained and repeated ‘similar’ allegations against Dr Miller.
Some claims went as far as saying Dr Miller had ‘taken money’ from work he didn’t carry out.
When sued for defamation, Mr Peake responded, claiming the defence of ‘truth’ in relation to his barrage of posts.
He said Dr Miller had acted in a threatening way during council meetings. Judge Parkes said he had seen a photo of the alleged ‘middle finger’ incident, and ruled that ‘no offensive gesture’ had been made.
Andrew Peake may have been ‘grated’ on by Dr Millers ‘intellectual self-confidence’ (Picture: Champion News)
He added: ‘Mr Peake was plainly consumed with a very strong personal dislike of Dr Miller, which is evident in his posts. I had the impression also that Dr Miller’s intellectual self-confidence, which some might regard as a little abrasive, may have grated a little on Mr Peake.
‘As Mr Peake told me, he is on the autistic spectrum, and he tends to see issues in polarised terms of black and white. In my judgment, that difficulty has led him to make accusations which are not justified by the evidence which he regards as proving them.’
The Judge said Mr Peake put forth multiple individual mistakes by Dr Miller – but none were of ‘great seriousness’.
‘All of us make mistakes, whether of judgment or otherwise: humanum est errare. Even judges do so. That does not make them incompetent,’ he said.
Awarding Dr Miller £20,000 in damages, he said he would take into account the “distress” which the former clerk had suffered from the posts.
Dr Miller avoided any places where he feared Mr Peake might be and said the stress was also placed on his wife and children.
Metro has reached out to both Dr Miller and Mr Peake, along with Fleggburgh Council for comment.
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