Spectator magazine fined and ordered to pay compensation over Stephen Lawrence article Brian Spiro, representing the magazine's publishers, apologised unreservedly to the Lawrence family and everyone involved with the case for what he said had been a "sad sequence of events" that led to the article being published. He explained that the usual stringent legal checks that would have normally spotted potential problems had broken down that day because both the editor Fraser Nelson and the senior legal advisor had been off sick. The article had instead been passed to a junior lawyer with little experience of media law who had approved the piece for publication. Mr Spiro said the magazine's checking system had since been changed to ensure there would be no repeat of the error in future. He said: "The publication of Rod Liddle's article was unprecedented and bitterly and regrettably a fault of this system which had hitherto worked well." District Judge Howard Riddle accepted that the Spectator had not intended to publish prejudicial material but said the "potential to undermine" justice would have caused additional distress to the Lawrence family. Awarding £1,000 compensation each to Mr and Mrs Lawrence, Mr Riddle said: "Apart from the fact that the article breached a court order the reality is that as a result of publication there was at least a brief period during a sensitive part of the trial in which the whole trial process itself was in jeopardy. He added: "It takes no imagination whatsoever to see the distress this development would have caused not least to the family and friends of Stephen Lawrence. Fortunately it is clear that the jury did not read the article and the trial was able to come to a fair conclusion. But for Mr and Mrs Lawrence and members of their family the prospect of the trial collapsing must have been agonising. One must assume that they had reached a stage where they believed that anything that could go wrong would go wrong. Spectator 1828 Ltd was also ordered to pay £615 costs.