Rowling settles over identity leak

A file photo of British author J.K. Rowling. Photo: Lefteris Pitarakis

A file photo of British author J.K. Rowling. Photo: Lefteris Pitarakis

Published Aug 1, 2013

Share

The author JK Rowling has accepted a substantial charity donation from a law firm that breached her confidentiality by revealing she had written a crime novel under a pseudonym.

The Harry Potter creator brought High Court proceedings against Chris Gossage, a partner at Russells and a friend of his, Judith Callegari.

Rowling was furious when she was revealed in The Sunday Times as the author of the thriller The Cuckoo's Calling, which was published under the name of Robert Galbraith.

The court heard that Russells had contacted Rowling's agent, disclosing that it was Mr Gossage who had divulged the confidential information to Ms Callegari, who then communicated it in the course of a Twitter exchange with a journalist.

Mr Gossage, Ms Callegari and Russells all apologised, with the firm agreeing to reimburse Rowling's legal costs and make a payment, by way of damages, to the Soldiers' Charity, formerly the Army Benevolent Fund.

Rowling said she would now be donating all the royalties from the book to the charity. -

The Independent

 

* If you use Gmail to read IOL's newsletters, note that Google is rolling out a new tabbed inbox that filters your mail into 5 separate tabs - Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums. IOL emails will probably be sent to the "Promotions" tab instead of the "Primary" tab. If you don't want it that way, drag the newsletter from the Promotions tab to the Primary tab. An alert will pop up. Click "yes" and your newsletters will continue to go to your Primary inbox.

Related Topics: