COBALT successfully represented the Suislepp family in relation to false allegations published in Postimees and Lõuna-Eesti Postimees

An important media dispute between the Suislepp family and AS Postimees Grupp was recently resolved. The family was successfully represented by COBALT Senior Associate Kaidi Reiljan-Sihvart, Managing Associate Kadri Michelson and Junior Associate Anna-Riin Brett.

Since the summer of 2019, more than 30 articles have been published about Ilvi Suislepp in the publications belonging to AS Postimees Grupp. The series of articles started with the online article of Postimees newspaper “Unprecedential situation: The principal of a small school pressures teachers to give good grades to their relatives”. Ilvi Suislepp worked as the principal of Kanepi Gymnasium at the time, and the articles criticized her work in the context of the title. Published articles also concerned Ilvi Suislepp’s husband and children.

After a long and complicated court case, the precedent-setting judgment entered into force. The courts found that the main statements of the published articles about Ilvi Suislepp, as well as the statements about Ilvi Suislepp’s husband and children, turned out to be incorrect. As a result of the litigation, AS Postimees Grupp was obliged to refute incorrect data, supplement and remove articles.

What can we learn from this media battle? Primarily, the fact that media has an obligation to verify published statements and the more serious the accusation, the greater the obligation to verify them. The media must avoid publishing incorrect information even if what is published is based on someone else’s words.

However, the most significant thing is that, if in the current practice, refuting reports have remained rather unnoticed and have not crossed a special media threshold, in this case, in cooperation with clients, we managed to achieve a result where the refutation is essentially equivalent to what was originally published.

Client’s comment: “We were happy to cooperate with COBALT. Their work is structured and very professional – these are the words that describe attorneys-at-law Kaidi Reiljan-Sihvart and Kadri Michelson and attorney Anna-Riin Brett who helped us.”

Notices refuting false claims of AS Postimees Grupp can be found in the online editions of newspapers in Estonian: here and here