Catriona M. Ferrier

Catriona leads the firm's media practice and is qualified both in Scotland and in England and Wales, having practised in London before returning to Glasgow. The dual qualification is the point of the appointment: a publisher distributing across Britain, or an individual written about on both sides of the border, is dealing with two systems at once, and it is more useful to hold both than to refer half the matter out.

The work divides between advice given before publication and disputes that follow it. Before publication, Catriona reads copy, scripts and programme treatments against the risks of defamation, malicious publication, privacy, confidence and contempt, and advises on what would have to change for a piece to be defensible. Afterwards, she acts for publishers and broadcasters defending claims and for those who have been written about.

Scotland's law of defamation is now largely statutory, and it does not follow the English legislation. The differences that catch people out are the serious harm threshold, the requirement that a trading company show serious financial loss, and the reduction of the period for bringing an action to one year with time running from first publication.

A claim that is comfortably in time in England may already be lost in Scotland.

Reputation work for private clients

Catriona also acts for individuals rather than institutions: people of some prominence, and people who have become prominent involuntarily. That work covers privacy and confidence, pre-publication correspondence, urgent applications to restrain publication by interdict, and the removal or de-indexing of material online. It sits alongside the firm's private client practice, since the people who need it are frequently the same people.

Publication across borders

Material published online is published everywhere, and the same article can found an action in one country and not in another. Catriona advises on where an action could competently be raised, which country's law a court would apply, and whether a foreign judgment could be enforced here, instructing lawyers qualified in the relevant country where the answer turns on their law.