Belafonte v News Group Newspapers [2026] EWHC 273 (KB): the High Court decides what The Sun's article meant
On 11 February 2026 the High Court decided what an article in The Sun about our client, Stephen Belafonte, meant to the people who read it. Mrs Justice Collins Rice found that it said he was guilty of harassing his former wife, Melanie Brown, in the United States, and that there were grounds to suspect him of harassing her during a later visit to this country. The ruling matters because in a libel claim the meaning is settled first, and everything that comes after is built on it. The judgment is published as Stephen Belafonte v News Group Newspapers Limited [2026] EWHC 273 (KB).
Who our client is, and how the dispute began
Stephen Belafonte is an American film and television producer who was married to Melanie Brown, the Spice Girls singer known as Mel B, for about ten years until they separated in 2017.
Since the separation, Ms Brown has made a series of public allegations about the marriage. Mr Belafonte says they are untrue. In 2024 he issued defamation proceedings against her in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, where his case is that her accusations, which include assault, rape, abuse, sex trafficking and unlawful possession of a firearm, are false. Those proceedings continue in the United States, and nothing decided in England resolves them.
We act for Mr Belafonte on the English side of the dispute. Our earlier account of the family proceedings is at the case of Melanie Brown and Stephen Belafonte.
The application in the family court, and what happened to it
In June 2024 Ms Brown applied for an emergency non-molestation order against Mr Belafonte while he was visiting London. By the end of that month the application had been withdrawn and she had been ordered to pay his costs.
The order was made first without notice, on 21 June 2024, so Mr Belafonte knew nothing about it at the time. The judge attached a condition that it would fall away automatically if he was leaving the country or had already left. At the hearing on 27 June, once he had put in evidence answering what had been said about him, Ms Brown withdrew the application. The court ordered her to pay his legal costs.
That last part is worth pausing on. Family proceedings do not usually end with one party paying the other's costs; each side ordinarily bears its own. A without notice application also asks a judge to restrain someone on one account alone, before the person it is aimed at has had any opportunity to answer, which is why the court expects a real reason for proceeding that way. Here, Mr Belafonte put in evidence answering the allegations, Ms Brown withdrew, and the court ordered her to pay his costs. The natural reading of that sequence is that the case for bringing the application, and for bringing it behind his back, had not been made out.
What The Sun published, and when
The Sun published the article online on 27 June 2024, the same day as that hearing, under the headline "MEL'S PAIN". It appeared in print the following morning as "Spice Girl's ex-hubby faces cop quiz on claims".
The article opened by telling readers that "Mel B's ex-husband Stephen Belafonte faces being questioned by UK police over harassment claims made by her". Around that it set out allegations attributed to Ms Brown about the marriage in the United States. It also described two things said to have happened during Mr Belafonte's visit to London: a drone flown over her home, and a process server sent to her door.
Why we brought the claim
We issued proceedings because a national newspaper told its readers that our client had harassed his former wife, in the same week that a court had declined to make the order she had asked for against him.
For someone in Mr Belafonte's position the damage is not an abstraction. He works in film and television, where the people who decide whether to work with you read the same newspapers as everyone else. He was also in the middle of proceedings in the United States about these very allegations. An article like this does its work quickly and quietly, among people who never mention it to your face.
A libel claim cannot settle what happened inside a marriage. What it can settle is what a newspaper told several million people about you, and whether that can be justified.
It is worth being clear about what the English claim is. It is a libel claim against the publisher of the newspaper. It is not a way of resolving the underlying allegations, which is what the Florida proceedings are for.
What "meaning" is, and why the court decides it first
"Meaning" in a libel claim is a term of art, and it is narrower than the everyday word suggests. It is not what the newspaper says it intended to convey, and it is not the impression the person written about took from the piece. It is the accusation the court decides the article actually made about that person, in the eyes of an ordinary reasonable reader, written out by the judge as a single sentence or two of plain English.
That sentence then becomes the case. It is what the newspaper has to defend, whether by proving it true, or as honest opinion, or as publication in the public interest. It is what our client has to show caused him serious harm. Once the court has fixed the meaning, the parties stop arguing about the article and argue about that sentence instead.
Meaning is tried first because the whole claim is built on it. Until the court has fixed the meaning, neither side knows what has to be proved.
English law applies what is called the single meaning rule. The court decides the one natural and ordinary meaning that an ordinary reasonable reader would take from the article, and the case proceeds on that basis. What the journalist intended does not come into it, and neither does what any particular reader happened to think.
Since section 11 of the Defamation Act 2013 removed the presumption in favour of a jury, a judge decides meaning alone, usually at a short preliminary hearing. The ruling then governs whether the newspaper can defend the article as true, whether it can rely on the honest opinion defence or on publication on a matter of public interest, and what our client needs to show on serious harm under section 1 of the same Act.
Chase levels, and why so much turns on them
Where an article reports an accusation rather than making it outright, the courts sort the possibilities into three levels. Level 1 says you did it. Level 2 says there are reasonable grounds to suspect you did it. Level 3 says there are grounds to investigate whether you did it. We set the scale out more fully in our guide to Chase levels in defamation cases.
Mrs Justice Collins Rice was careful about how rigidly the scale is applied. At paragraph 8 of the judgment she said the levels "are perhaps best understood as points on a spectrum rather than rigid and mutually exclusive categories".
The level decides how much work the newspaper has to do. To defend a level 1 meaning as true, it has to prove our client actually did it. To defend a level 3 meaning it only has to prove there were grounds to look into it, which is a much lighter burden and can sometimes be discharged by pointing at the existence of a complaint. That is why the argument at this hearing is worth having properly.
What each side argued
Our case was that the article made two allegations of guilt. The newspaper's case was that it made two much weaker suggestions.
Mr Belafonte's case was that the article said, at level 1, that he was guilty of harassing Ms Brown in the United States, and that he had used a family visit as cover to harass her further in this country through the drone and the process server.
News Group Newspapers argued for something considerably lower. On the United States allegations it said the article went no further than grounds to investigate, at level 3. On the London incidents it accepted grounds to suspect that the two things happened, but argued that whether they amounted to harassment was put as a matter for investigation.
How the judge read the article
She read it as a reader would, quickly, and declined to treat a short celebrity item as though it were a legal document. At paragraph 28 she recorded her first impression:
"When I first looked at the Article, I registered immediately that, although it dealt with personal matters keenly felt by the individuals involved, it was offered (and would be consumed) as a brief item of celebrity gossip. An ordinary reasonable Sun reader would absorb it as such in a matter of seconds before moving swiftly on."
She warned against over-analysis. The ordinary reader does a certain amount of loose thinking, and it would be "too lawyerly and over-analytical" to credit someone scanning a gossip item in seconds with fine distinctions. On the London incidents she was not persuaded that the article adopted Ms Brown's allegations at level 1 by baldly repeating them. A reader might draw the connection, but the article was not making it for them.
The meaning the court determined
At paragraph 41 the judge set out her conclusion:
"The Claimant is guilty of having harassed Ms Brown in the USA. [Chase level 1]
There are grounds to suspect that, during a subsequent visit to the UK, the Claimant:
(a) caused a drone to be flown over Ms Brown's home; and
(b) caused a process-server to visit her unnecessarily;
and there are accordingly grounds to suspect the Claimant of harassing Ms Brown in the UK in these circumstances. [Chase level 2]"
Both sides had already agreed that the article made allegations of fact, and that it was defamatory of Mr Belafonte at common law, so neither of those questions needed deciding.
It is worth being clear about what that ruling is and what it is not. The court decided what the article said about our client. It did not decide whether what the article said is true. That question comes later.
Where the claim stands
On the United States allegations the court accepted our case in full, and on the London incidents it landed between the two positions.
The article was found to say that Mr Belafonte was guilty of harassment in the United States. That is Chase level 1, guilt, not the level 3 grounds to investigate that the newspaper argued for. Level 1 is the heaviest of the three for a newspaper to defend, because nothing short of proving the allegation will do.
On the London incidents the court settled on Chase level 2, grounds to suspect, rather than the level 1 we argued for or the level 3 the newspaper wanted.
A meaning ruling fixes what the article said. It does not end the case. The claim against News Group Newspapers continues, and the Florida proceedings continue separately in the United States.
Lawyers' thoughts about the case
Two things we would draw out of this judgment for anyone thinking about a claim against a newspaper.
The first is that the meaning hearing is not a formality on the way to the real case. In our experience it is the real case. Getting the level right, and arguing for it properly, changes what the other side has to prove, and it changes it before a penny has been spent on disclosure or witnesses. A claim that looks marginal at level 3 can look very different at level 1.
The second is about how judges read online articles. There is a natural temptation, when you have been written about, to read the piece forensically, weighing every clause. Judges deliberately do not read them that way. They ask what a reader taking the article in at speed would come away with, which is sometimes more damaging than the careful reading and sometimes less. Understanding that difference early tends to be the thing that decides whether a claim is worth bringing at all.
Frequently asked questions
What is a Chase level?
It is the courts' shorthand for how strongly an article puts an accusation. Level 1 says you did it, level 2 says there are reasonable grounds to suspect you did it, and level 3 says there are grounds to investigate whether you did it. The level decides what a publisher has to prove to defend the article as true. There is more detail in our guide to Chase levels in defamation cases.
Why does the court decide meaning before the trial?
Because the whole claim turns on it. Until meaning is settled, neither side knows what is being defended, and preparing for every possible reading would cost a great deal. A preliminary hearing on meaning is usually short, is decided by a judge alone, and in many cases resolves the dispute in practice.
Can I sue if a newspaper only says there are grounds to suspect me?
Yes. A level 2 or level 3 meaning can still be defamatory and can still do serious harm to your reputation. It is generally harder to succeed against, because the publisher has a lower bar to clear in defending it, which is precisely why the argument about the level is worth having.
Does it matter what the journalist meant?
No. The court asks what the words conveyed to the ordinary reasonable reader. It does not ask what the writer intended, and it does not ask what any particular reader actually thought.
Does a meaning ruling mean the article was true or false?
Neither. It decides only what the article said. Whether what it said can be justified is a separate question, decided later, and the burden of proving truth sits with the publisher.
How long does a meaning ruling take?
The hearing itself is usually a matter of hours, and judgment tends to follow within weeks. In this case the hearing was on 27 January 2026 and judgment was given on 11 February 2026.
Can I bring a claim in England if most of what happened was abroad?
Sometimes. What matters is where the article was published and the harm it did here, rather than where the underlying events took place. Mr Belafonte's claim concerns a British newspaper read in this country, while the dispute about the allegations themselves is before a court in Florida.
If a newspaper has written about you
If something published about you is untrue and is doing you real damage, the first question worth answering is what the article actually says in law, because that governs everything else. We advise on claims against national newspapers, online publishers and individuals, and you can read our defamation legal advice. Other reported claims we have acted in include David Paisley v Graham Linehan and Aaronson v Stones, and our wider record is on our reported cases and case studies.
