No joke for Harrods as it loses libel case

Luxury British department store Harrods was left with legal bills estimated at £500,000 on Tuesday after losing a libel battle with the Wall Street Journal over a story triggered by an April Fool’s hoax.

Harrods had sued Dow Jones and Company, the Wall Street Journal’s publisher, over an article entitled ‘‘The Enron of Britain?’’ which appeared in 2002 in one of the journal’s regular columns four days after the paper was taken in by an April Fools announcement that Harrods was to be floated.

While the story acknowledged the paper had fallen for the hoax it posed the question of whether Harrods was Britain’s Enron — the US energy giant which went spectacularly bust in 2001 amid revelations it had hidden billions of dollars in debt. A jury at London’s High Court on Tuesday threw out the libel claim by Harrods and Justice Eady ruled it should pay all legal costs, estimated by one lawyer at the court at £500,000.