Richard Rampton

Richard Rampton QC (born 8 January 1941) is a British libel lawyer. He has been involved in several high-profile cases, with his defence of Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books against David Irving among the best known. In Irving v. Penguin Books and Lipstadt, he represented them against false accusations of libel after Lipstadt said that Irving was a Holocaust denier in her book Denying the Holocaust (1993). He also represented McDonald's in the McLibel case, where the company sued two members of the London Greenpeace environmental campaigning group.

Rampton's earlier cases include Andrew Neil (editor of The Sunday Times) vs Peregrine Worsthorne, Lord Aldington vs Count Nikolai Tolstoy and Gillian Taylforth vs News of the World. He also successfully represented politician George Galloway against The Daily Telegraph over allegations that he took £375,000 from Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. He represented Associated Newspapers Group plc in Lucas-Box v News Group Newspapers Ltd; Lucas-Box v Associated Newspapers Group plc and others. This case produced the "Lucas-Box meaning" whereby under modern libel practice a defendant must set out in his/her statement of case the defamatory meaning he/she seeks to prove to be essentially or substantially true.

Educated at Bryanston School and Queen's College, Oxford University, Richard Rampton was called to the Bar in November 1965 (Inner Temple) and was appointed a QC (Queen's Counsel) in 1987.