I wasnt going to comment.... However
Have a read of Para 85, it is the "guts" of the striking down of the libel damages from $3m to 700k. Essentially, a HK libel case involving a HK solicitor was used as a yardstick by the original Judge to arrive at the $3m dollar figure.
The Appeal Judges ruled libeling a solicitor is more serious than libeling a pilot. I appreciate this is very subjective, however given the Judges are all Solicitors they are treading on eggshells making such a claim, and need to be uttterly certain they understand the world of Pilots. I appreciate that a solicitor wrongly and publicly accused of imbezzlement will have suffered career limiting damage. The Judges readily accepted that the Solicitors damage was obvious, because they are all Solicitors. However, to them the 49'ers damage was less obvious and therefore needed to be proven. How the heck do you prove that? To us it is obvious.
To a fellow pilot, a pilot wrongly accused of being a poor, disloyal employee has his career prospects damaged to the same extent as the solicitor in question. The fact the solicitor was libelled to a wide audience, whereas the 49ers were a narrow audience is irrelevant, as the opinions of a pilot's peers are paramount, because we are peer-reviewed like no other profession on the planet. Whilst people will be reluctant to trust that solicitor with their money, pilots who do not fully appreciate the background to the 49ers will be reluctant to trust their lives with someone "tainted" to the extent the 49ers were. Further, the solicitor got a retraction from the publication, the 49ers got no such retraction. In fact, Nick Rhodes repeated the accusations that the 49ers had sickness issues when announcing the intention to Appeal. These were the same sickness issues he famously couldn't substantiate when he had a bible in his hand.
I cannot help but feel, that yet again, Cathay Pilots were on the raw end of decision by Judges who fundamentally do not understand our profession.