JK Rowling’s lawyer has been fined £ 1,000 from a British legal watchdog for leaking the fact that his client had published the detective novel The Cuckoo’s Calling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The revelations came only a couple of months after Mulholland Books published the work.
Reuters has the scoop: “Chris Gossage, a partner at Russells Solicitors, which represented the Harry Potter author, leaked one of the publishing world’s biggest secrets to his wife’s best friend – who then tweeted Galbraith’s real identity to a journalist. Rowling, Britain’s best-selling author, was furious when she found out that a partner at her London-based law firm had revealed she was the author of ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’.”
Rowling took legal action against Gossage and his friend Judith Callegari and won. The firm apologized to Rowling, paid her legal fees and made a donation to the Soldiers’ Charity, a charity of her choosing.