A woman described as a 'fraudster' and a 'troll' by Optical Express has had her defamation claim dismissed by the High Court in London. Sasha Rodoy, aged 72 and residing in London, established a website titled 'Optical Express Ruined My Life' to serve as a platform for disgruntled clients of the Glasgow-based company.
The controversy arose when Optical Express responded to complaints from four former patients by sending them letters discrediting Ms Rodoy. These letters, approved by the company's founder and multi-millionaire Scots businessman David Mousdale, alleged that Ms Rodoy was a 'vexatious individual', a 'self-confessed and known fraudster', and that she engaged in online trolling of company staff to an extent that warranted police involvement.
Ms Rodoy initiated legal proceedings for defamation, asserting that Optical Express's motive for publishing such statements was to deter patients from heeding her advice and to shield itself from potential compensation claims. However, following a trial at the High Court, a judge ruled against her, concluding that the company's comments were 'substantially true'.
The court heard evidence that during the 1990s, Ms Rodoy fabricated a story about founding an agency called Decoy Dolls, which purportedly employed actresses to ensnare men unfaithful to their spouses. This narrative was disseminated across several publications and television chat shows, for which she received payment. In her testimony, Ms Rodoy admitted that the interviews were inaccurate but dismissed the incident as a 'prank'. Her legal team argued that past conduct could not justify a present-tense accusation that she 'is a fraudster'.
Additionally, the trial revealed that Ms Rodoy had tracked Optical Express employees online and posted photographs and derogatory remarks about them and their families over an extended period. Mr Mousdale, one of Scotland's wealthiest individuals, testified that Ms Rodoy posed a threat to his business, justifying the monitoring of her activities. He stated, 'As the claimant was running a website and social media channels containing our business name, and many of our patients were posting on these channels and she was offering her advice and opinion on their care provided by Optical Express, we began monitoring her website. We have someone who’s threatening our brand, threatening our people, threatening me personally and my directors. Of course we’re going to monitor that person’s activity.'
The judge determined that Mr Mousdale, aged 57, was not motivated by 'malice' when he drafted the comments about Ms Rodoy and instructed staff to include them in correspondence with patients. In his written ruling, Mr Justice Griffiths stated, 'I do not think, having heard him give evidence, and having considered all the other evidence, that Mr Mousdale was motivated by personal animus or spite towards Ms Rodoy. He genuinely thought she was a nuisance and a menace, not only to his business, but also to the patients. He knew her views on refractive eye surgery and he honestly and reasonably considered them to be contrary to mainstream professional and regulatory opinion. Her campaign against providers of refractive eye surgery in general, and Optical Express in particular, was, for Ms Rodoy, a vehicle for indiscriminate and disingenuous attention-seeking, mockery, cruelty and abuse. In short, it was an opportunity for trolling which Ms Rodoy embraced wholeheartedly. It is clear to me from the evidence that Ms Rodoy relished winding up, insulting, and upsetting all sorts of people, whether senior executives or more junior people, including call centre and online chat operatives. My conclusion is that the imputation in the defamatory letters that “Ms Rodoy trolls Optical Express and many of its staff online” was substantially true at the time the letters were sent.'
Ms Rodoy began her campaign against laser eye surgery after claiming that an operation performed by another company in 2011 had 'ruined her life'. Optical Express, founded in 1991 by Mr Mousdale, now operates over 130 clinics across the UK, Ireland, and mainland Europe.
