Noel Clarke must pay £3m to Guardian after losing legal battle

Actor Noel Clarke must pay at least £3m of the Guardian publisher’s legal costs after pursuing a “far-fetched” and “false case” against the newspaper for reporting sexual misconduct allegations, a High Court judge has ruled.

The Doctor Who and Kidulthood star took Guardian News and Media (GNM) to court after the paper ran a series of stories in 2021 claiming he had used his power in the film and TV industry to prey upon and harass women.

In August, a judge dismissed the star’s libel claim and said the Guardian had succeeded in defending its stories on the grounds of truth and public interest.

Clarke became tearful at points during Tuesday’s hearing, telling the judge: “I have lost my work, my savings, my legal team, my ability to support my family and much of my health.”

He is likely to have to pay even more in total after the Guardian told the court that a conservative estimate of its total costs was £6m.

The usual costs rule is that the winner of a trial, in this case the Guardian, receives its costs from the losing party, in this case Clarke.

Judge Mrs Justice Steyn said he must pay £3m within the next 28 days, ahead of a detailed assessment into the total costs to be recovered.

She said: “It seems to me that the sum of £3m sought by the defendant is appropriate and no more than what ought to be reasonably ordered in this case.

“It is substantially lower than the defendant’s likely level of recovery on detailed assessment and so in my judgment, it does allow for a suitably wide margin of error.”

The judge continued: “The claimant maintained a far-fetched and indeed a false case that the articles were not substantially true, by pursuing allegations of dishonesty and bad faith against almost all of the defendant’s truth witnesses.”

Gavin Millar KC, for GNM, had asked the court to order payment of half of the estimated £6m costs as an interim payment, which he said was “significantly less” than the “norm” of asking for 75-80% of the costs.

Clarke, who represented himself at the hearing, told the court he thought the Guardian’s legal costs were excessive and should be reduced.

He asked the court to take into account his limited means, adding that he didn’t bring his case maliciously.

“My wife and children live every day under the shadow of uncertainty. We remortgaged our home just to survive,” he said.

“Any costs or interim payments must be proportionate to my means as a single household, not the unlimited resources of a major media conglomerate.

“A crushing order would not just punish me, it would punish my children and wife, and they do not deserve that.”

In written submissions, he said his legal team had resigned after he had been unable to provide funding for the hearing.

He also asked the court to hold payment of costs pending an appeal.

Mrs Justice Steyn said that if Clarke and the Guardian could not agree how much of the remaining amount he should pay, a court would assess whether all of the paper’s £6m total legal bill was appropriate and justified.

Clarke found fame playing Mickey Smith in Doctor Who between 2005 and 2010, and went on to become a successful actor, writer, producer and director.

But his screen career collapsed in 2021 after the Guardian published accounts from several women who had worked with him, alleging sexual misconduct, which he denied.

He sued the Guardian for libel, but after a six week trial a High Court judge found that the paper’s allegations were substantially true and that he had behaved in a sexually inappropriate way including unwanted sexual contact.