Energy tycoon to receive damages from Mail publisher

Energy tycoon Dale Vince is set to receive damages from the Daily Mail's publisher over a data protection claim against the newspaper.

The Court of Appeal earlier overturned a 2025 decision to throw out the claim, which Vince brought against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) over an article headlined: "Labour repays £100,000 to sex pest [or sex harassment] donor", published in June 2023.

The story said Labour was handing back money to donor Davide Serra, but had a picture showing Vince, who owns Gloucestershire team Forest Green Rovers, holding a Just Stop Oil banner.

Sir Geoffrey Vos - one of three judges in the case - said he had decided the judge "was wrong" to rule out Vince's claim.

The pictures, published in print and on The Mail+ app, were changed to one of Serra online 47 minutes after publication, while the original pictures of Vince remained in the print version.

An employment tribunal in 2022 heard Serra had made sexist comments to a female colleague which were found to amount to unlawful harassment related to sex.

Vince claimed ANL unfairly used his personal data and that the publication of his photograph with this story would falsely lead readers to believe he had been accused of sexual harassment.

In his judgment, Sir Geoffrey said that ANL "failed to take care not to publish misleading information and images in the articles" and that the headline juxtaposed with with images of Vince "would have misled many casual readers into thinking that Vince was the 'sex harassment donor' referred to in the headline".

The Ecotricity founder claimed ANL had misused his personal data, but ANL had defended the claim, with the publisher's lawyers telling the High Court that it was an abuse of process and a "resurrection" of a libel claim from the same article that was dismissed in 2024.

In his ruling on Wednesday, Sir Geoffrey said he thought the High Court Judge, Mr Justice Swift, had been "rather too harsh" on Vince and that Vince had not been abusing the process of court.

He added that Vince had been trying to seek a remedy after "an obvious injustice perpetrated by a wrongdoer who was taking every possible legal point against him".

The judge later said that ANL had "no real prospect" of defending Vince's damages claim over unfairly processing his data, and that the publisher accepted during the hearing that the donor had demonstrated some damage.

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