Cneifiwr is not a lawyer and does not propose dissecting the findings of Mr Justice Tugendhat, but one thing that emerges from the judgement is how much emphasis was placed on the history of the planning dispute which pre-dated Jacqui's blog.
The narrative presented by Mr James's team was that this led to a campaign of personal revenge against the council and some of its senior officers, and the judge accepted this interpretation of Jacqui's motives. The rest of the case and the judge's findings then inevitably flowed from that interpretation.
A number of witnesses made themselves available to give testimony on Jacqui's behalf, but the judge ruled that most of their written evidence was inadmissible because it constituted opinion, and he said, he was not prepared to conduct an opinion poll. In the event only one witness for Jacqui gave vidence, and that revolved around the events which led to the publication of Mr James's letter to the madaxeman blog.
The problem with that was that the whole question of Jacqui's motives was a question of opinion and interpretation, and in the end only Mr James's opinion counted.
For all those of us who have had the pleasure of meeting Jacqui and getting to know her, the idea that Jacqui's blog was one prolonged exercise of revenge is false.
The judge noted in his verdict that Jacqui and her husband have only a very modest income, so his decision to award damages of £25,000 against her has to be seen as punitive. How justice or the public interest are served by ruining a hard working family and rewarding a senior local government official backed by public funds (in a way which remains legally highly questionable) is not clear.
For the press and the rest of us, the judgement is fraught with dangers. A key part of the judgement found that Jacqui Thompson was guilty of harassment through her blog. Where is the line to be drawn between harassment and legitimate comment and criticism of an arm of government?
The local press in Carmarthenshire knows from bitter experience that the council is extremely intolerant of criticism, and there was a timely wake-up call this week to the Llanelli Star and its sister papers:
Llanelli Star
Llanelli Star trainee reporter @Chad_Welch ejected from council meeting and has notes seized. Full story here
The effect of the judgement will be to strengthen the chief executive's conviction that he is beyond reproach and beyond criticism. The rest of us had better watch out.
The last word goes to Lord Justice Cocklecarrot and his famous summing up of the Jeremy Thorpe case.
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