Dering alleged that Uris had libelled him in a footnote in his novel Exodus, which described his participation in medical experiments in Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust.
On 6 May, the jury returned a verdict for Dering, but awarded him contemptuous damages of one halfpenny, the smallest coin in the currency.
In particular, The Times provided extensive coverage of the case, printing large portions of the testimony presented in court.
[3] Wladislaw Alexander Dering was a Polish doctor who was imprisoned at Auschwitz during the Second World War for resistance activities.
After his return, his family drew his attention to a passage in the novel Exodus by American author Leon Uris.
The passage, on page 155, read:Here in Block X Dr. Wirths used women as guinea pigs and Dr. Schumann sterilized by castration and X-ray and Clauberg removed ovaries and Dr. Dehring performed 17,000 'experiments' in surgery without anaesthetics.Dering issued writs for libel against Uris, his British publishers William Kimber & Co Ltd, and the printers.
Colin Duncan QC (with Brian Neill) appeared for Dering, while Lord Gardiner (with David Hirst and Louis Blom-Cooper) represented the defendants.
[1] One of the trial's most dramatic moments occurred during the testimony of Dr Adélaïde Hautval, an imprisoned French psychiatrist who worked in the camp's hospital.
Uris had copied his data from Underground: The Story of a People by Joseph Tenenbaum when he referred to doctors working in Auschwitz.
[7] Lawton, who had flirted with fascism in the 1930s, described Hautval in regard to her testimony as "perhaps one of the most impressive and courageous women who had ever given evidence in the courts of this country".