Harrods begins action against WSJ over 'Enron' article

by Staff,, Brand Republic 17-Feb-04, 08:30

LONDON – Harrods has begun its legal action against Dow Jones & Co and has launched its High Court case accusing the publisher of libel after an April Fools joke backfired and led to an article questioning whether the store was a 'British Enron'.

The story in The Wall Street Journal was written in response to an April Fool's press release. The article, headlined "The Enron of Britain?", appeared in the paper in 2002 four days after the paper was tricked by an April Fool joke by Harrods' owner Mohammed Al Fayed.

The hoax release had claimed that Harrod's was to be floated on the Stock Exchange. The April Fool press release came with a clear giveaway: the contact name was Loof Lirpa, which is April Fool spelt backwards.

The Wall Street Journal's article only ran in the US editions of the paper on April 5 and in online editions.

The WSJ freely admitted it had fallen for the joke but then went on to seriously question whether Harrods was another financial disaster waiting to happen like the US energy giant Enron, which spectacularly collapsed in 2001.

Lawyers acting for Harrods told the court how the article said that should the famous department store ever float "investors would be wise to question its every disclosure".

James Price, Harrods' lawyer, said the store was concerned that the "Enron" article was still freely available to readers of the WSJ website.

In its defence the newspaper's lawyer Gavin Millar said the article had been meant as "tongue in cheek" and that there had been no attempt to make "a real comparison between Harrods and Enron".

Although the piece was only published in the US, the case is being head in the UK after a High Court judge rejected Dow Jones' claims that Britain was not the proper jurisdiction in which to bring a claim.

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