04 Jun Belfast Telegraph: Katie Simpson murder detective takes legal action after online allegations
James Brannigan’s lawyer is threatening to issue defamation proceedings against FiFi Garrett, who last month resigned from The Katie Trust, set up in the murdered showjumper’s memory.
The former detective’s lawyer, Kevin Winters of KRW Law, said a letter of claim is being issued “in response to a series of false and defamatory social media postings alleging The Katie Trust had been deregistered and is no longer a valid charitable organisation”.
KRW Law said the Trust “remains a properly constituted charity” and that the allegations circulated online were “untrue and have caused reputational harm”.
Pre-action correspondence had been issued “seeking the removal of existing offending publications, a retraction, apology and an undertaking that no further defamatory postings will be made”.
Mr Winters said: “False allegations of this nature have the potential to cause serious reputational damage to charitable organisations and, in this case, a wide range of families of victims on whose behalf the Trust is working to access justice and transparency.
“Our client and charity director, James Brannigan, has quite properly been in communication with the Charity Commission on issues which have been improperly construed as presenting compliance issues for the Trust.”