In and around 2023, Roy and Rianne Schestowitz were subject to a horrific campaign of online harassment. Unfortunately they blamed me for it, and in turn wrote and published an astonishing array of articles making false accusations against me. Last year, I sued them in the high court in London. In turn, they countersued me for harassment. The case was heard last month and I'm pleased to say that the counterclaim was dismissed and I prevailed in my case. The court awarded me £70,000 in damages.

@mjg59 Congratulations; or well, I guess something closer to relief!

@mjg59 great news!

@mjg59 Are they also paying your legal expenses - which, I imagine, could be higher than £70,000 ?

@elronxenu The order hasn't been issued yet but I'd expect it to include costs

@mjg59 Congratulations on a win for the light side.

@ruben hope so!

The judgement is now publicly available: https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2025/3063

@mjg59 I'm really glad you did this. Articles like https://techrights.org/o/2023/09/18/downsides-of-lvfs/index.shtml are just crazy.

@mjg59 It's very detailed and simply explained isn't it. Now, you can relax and get on and write that book...

Abuse was not only targeted at me - during the course of the case my solicitor was attacked on the basis of his perceived religion, and baseless accusations of antisemitism were made against the firm. I appreciate the professionalism that they displayed throughout.

@mjg59 Of course it’s fucking techrights. Total scum.

@mjg59 congratulations, and hope this is the last time we all have to hear from Roy

@mjg59 I didn't follow the "data retention" part of the judgement. What was that about?

@mjg59 Having dealt with abuse from them for years myself, I'm pleased to see you took them to court and won.

@kees handling and processing data related to criminal activities falls under data protection law and should be removed on request unless it's for the purposes of a valid exception such as journalism, or something vaguely like that

@doctormo this comes after exploring every alternative approach to having the material removed

@sjvn @mjg59 @mjg59 Hopefully that will discourage him from his tendency to insult anyone who writes things that he disagrees with, as he has been doing to Mary and me for years.

@mjg59 The money doesn't help to undo these bad accusations, but at least it feels good to have won. Probably still not recommended to replicate.

@http would strongly encourage not being in this position to start with

@mjg59 For those who don't have the background, are there links to the original libellous articles?

I also didn't understand the backstory about drug/cocaine use.

In reading the judgment it claims (AIUI) that the defendant continues to publish on his blog, and it mentions possible contempt of court and remedies? Does it mean he has to take the articles down? Is it sufficient for him to post some sort of "apology" as was possibly implied? I found the whole decision a bit complicated to read.

@purpleidea this is the judgement, there'll be a separate order that implements it

@mjg59 Congratulations!!!

Last week, Rianne Schestowitz applied for permission to appeal the judgement. This was rejected today.

The next step will likely be an order including an injunction requiring the removal of the offending articles and forbidding any repetition of the baseless claims.

@mjg59 Do you have any say in the wording of the summary of the judgement they were ordered to publish? Do you get to negotiate for a form of words acceptable to you both? For their sakes I sincerely hope they’re not stupid enough to publish anything *attacking* the judgement, but based on their conduct so far …

@dpk There is typically a requirement that the wording be agreed by both parties, and imposed by the court if agreement can't be reached.

@mjg59 finally getting around to reading the judgement, and: wow. yikes. (was not aware that the names you had mentioned were dr. & mrs. techrights, but … dang)

@mjg59 “They are clearly nowhere near any such thing.” sometimes the system works I guess

@mjg59 I must admit, I thought posting https://techrights.org/n/2025/11/25/Court_s_Decision_Misused_in_Attempt_to_Hide_Transphobia_Censori.shtml after losing was very courageous of them...

@dickon @mjg59 saw that one the other day, even by the low standards of techrights it's utterly rambling and incoherent

@fraggle @mjg59 It's also probably defamatory in its own right, if not outright contempt. I don't know -- the gods decreed I should spend my life wrangling computers, not dealing with legal bullshit.

The order has now been agreed on by the court and will likely be formally issued on Monday. The Schestowitzs are required to remove all posts that repeat the false claims (not merely the posts that were the subject of the litigation) by 4PM on the 16th of December, along with payment of damages and costs.

@mjg59
What's the remedy if they refuse to comply or are unable to pay?

@FritzAdalis if they refuse, potentially contempt of court and jail time. If they're unable, potentially bankruptcy.

@mjg59 Where is the list of actual offending posts?

@purpleidea I'm going to choose not to link to the stuff defaming me because well

@mjg59 Yeah it wasn't to encourage more defaming of course, but to rather understand what the bar of defamation here looks like... In the judgment I didn't even see a list of links. Does the new order have that? Can you link to that?

@purpleidea https://techrights.org/wiki/Matthew_J_Garrett/ gives a pretty solid overview

@mjg59 wow they have a whole page about you! I guess I don't want to be famous, haha! I can't imagine what (no offence) actually famous people must go through!

Who's doing all the IRC harassment against them? Any ideas?

AFAICT they think it's you because your account logged off at the same time as one of the harassers? Like don't they have better evidence? A netsplit could cause that same thing, can't it?

Glad you're past it! What a weird website!

The order has now been officially issued and I've put a copy at https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/case/order.pdf . The Schestowitzs have indicated that they intend to appeal the order, but have not as yet indicated their grounds for doing so. My understanding is that this does not remove their obligation to follow the terms of the order.

@mjg59 Is the extremely direct second-person language on that first page normal legal practice or was it specifically thought necessary in this case?

@pseudomonas I believe that's normal

@mjg59 Obviously I want this to go away as much as anyone, but the interest rate on the damages in (4) is impressive. My reading of the guidelines is up to 10% on top of the base rate so 14% which would be £9.8K not £13K. Then again I'm not the lawyer here!

@ross Interest is due from when a part 36 offer to settle is rejected, which happened about 18 months ago IIRC

@mjg59 Oooh. Ouch.

@ross the idea is that if you reject a settlement offer that's better than what you get given in court, you've wasted everyone's time and money and so you should need to pay more costs and also the interest from the point where you rejected the settlement

@mjg59 That's a 404 (which I don't understand because there are clearly people here who have read it)

@denisbloodnok Whoops I upgraded the storage in my server without making sure I'd synced everything I'd touched today, should be there now?

Today Roy Schestowitz made a post including the claim (re: me) that "the Microsoft connection was affirmed under oath". This is ironic - I have never worked for Microsoft, and the strongest claim made under cross examination is that I have social relationships with some Microsoft employees who may have visited my home. On the other hand, public records show that Roy's home in Manchester is owned by a relative who is a senior engineer at Microsoft. Microsoft money apparently bought his house.

As a fellow target of Roy Schestowitz's false propaganda (not at the level Roy attacked @mjg59, of course), I appreciate that you adjudicated this.

Litigation is risky & difficult even when it's obvious who is correct. I thank you & the Court for working to the just conclusion.

Note there are ppl in the #FreeSoftware community who (for years) collaborated with Roy to spread lies about their political enemies. I hope this ruling also quells that behavior.

https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/case/order.pdf
Cc: @ehashman

Today the court provided the order regarding costs and the publishing of a summary of the case: https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/case/order2.pdf . The Schestowitzs must publish a summary of the case by 4PM on the 16th (tomorrow) and keep it there for at least 6 months, and must pay my costs by the 23rd. This is in addition to the previous order (https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/case/order.pdf) that requires all the offending claims be removed by 4PM tomorrow, along with payment of damages.

An interesting part of the first order is that it requires removal of all posts that make claims determined to be defamatory, not just the posts that were the subject of the case - over 100 additional posts were made after the case was filed that repeated aspects of the claims, and these must also be removed by 4PM London time tomorrow

(The documents I've posted are all part of the public record - anyone can obtain them from CEFile)

I should note that the case summary has already been published on Techrights and Tuxmachines, and look forward to the Schestowitzs complying with the rest of the order

I've had a couple of people ask what happens if they don't fully comply with the orders - the answer is that they can be held in contempt of court, which can result in a range of penalties up to imprisonment (https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part-81-applications-and-proceedings-in-relation-to-contempt-of-court).

Pleased to see that the Schestowitzes have removed the publications that were the subject of the case - however, they have not (as far as I can tell) followed the requirement to remove any other pages that repeated the defamation (11(c))

Rianne Schestowitz has indicated that the Schestowitzes have filed for bankruptcy. If true, their assets (including personal property and domain names) will be sold to recover as much of the debt to me as possible, and my understanding is that the remaining debt will then be discharged after 12 months.

@mjg59 Any idea why they continued blaming you? Someone who runs a tech website for 20 years should be able to understand how flimsy the “simultaneous timeout” argument is.

@jeroen94704 I genuinely can't explain it

@mjg59 Yeh that doesn't surprise me too much; you didn't think this was going to be easy do you?

@mjg59 how badly can someone screw up their own bankruptcy doing it pro se?

@marypcbuk I believe the system is actually designed for this - someone is appointed to manage it

Welp https://www.thegazette.co.uk/notice/5035772

@mjg59 Sigh. I suppose he is still holding to his evidence-free determination that you are the real attacker. Because otherwise he would have to admit that he might have been wrong, and wrecking his life is clearly a better option.

@RogerBW To be fair he owes me over 300,000 pounds at this point