Sentence
Wouter Vandenhaute — © belga
The Brussels court of first instance has rejected the claim for damages from football club RSC Anderlecht against journalist Jan Hauspie. In the judgment, the court states that it cannot escape the impression that the procedure was at least partly initiated with the intention of intimidating.
Football club Anderlecht had filed a lawsuit against Humo journalist Jan Hauspie following two articles that appeared in the weekly magazine last year. In those documents, chairman Wouter Vandenhaute was put through the wringer. Hauspie spoke about wages, the way of working within the club and the high staff turnover. A former employee was also interviewed who called Vanderhaute and CEO Peter Verbeke “two psychopaths”, the latter even receiving the nickname “le petit Nazi”.
RSC Anderlecht demanded 25,000 euros from Jan Hauspie because it allegedly suffered damage as a result of the articles. But the court of first instance in Brussels has completely dismissed that requirement. She cites, among other things, that Anderlecht’s lawyers have not made the effort “to substantiate the alleged damage in even the most rudimentary manner”.
“Not the slightest piece of evidence”
“Speaking in this context is, among other things, the gratuitous manner in which the claimant (the Anderlecht club, ed.) posits that as a result of the publication of the article in question, she would have suffered material losses in the form of a loss of ‘conspicuous and abnormal many sponsors’ and ‘a striking number of young players’, without presenting even the slightest piece of evidence for this claim, which is easily verifiable, but equally without allowing this to stop them from summarizing their damage on this point in one breath. to be laconically estimated at an amount of ‘ex aequo et bono’ 25,000 euros,” it reads.
The court therefore declared RSC Anderlecht’s claim against Humo-Journalist Jan Hauspie admissible, but rejected it as unfounded.
2024-04-17 06:22:41
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