1999, former Hackney London Borough Council executive Samuel Yeboah successfully sued the Eye after he was targeted in the Rotten Borough column "at least 13 times." In this column, Yeboah was described as "corrupt", and using "the Race Card" to escape this criticism. The Eye paid damages and offered an apology. A victory for the magazine came in late 2001, when a libel case brought against it by a Cornish chartered accountant, John Stuart Condliffe, finally came to trial after ten years and the case was dropped after six weeks when the parties reached an out-of-court settlement in which Condliffe agreed to pay £100,000 towards the Eye'''s defence costs. Writing in The Guardian, Jessica Hodgson noted, "The victory against Condliffe – who was represented by top media firm Peter Carter-Ruck and partners – is a big psychological victory for the magazine". In 2009, Private Eye successfully challenged an injunction brought against it by Michael Napier, the former head of the Law Society, who had sought to claim "confidentiality" for a report that he had been disciplined by the Law Society in relation to a conflict of interest. The ruling had wider significance in that it allowed other rulings by the Law Society to be publicised. Ownership The magazine is owned by an eclectic group of people and is published by a limited company, Pressdram Ltd, which was bought as an "off the shelf" company by Peter Cook in November 1961.Private Eye does not publish a list of its editors, writers, designers and staff. In 1981 the book The Private Eye Story stated that the owners were Cook, who owned most of the shares, with smaller shareholders including the actors Dirk Bogarde and Jane Asher, and several of those involved with the founding of the magazine. Most of those on the list have since died, however, and it is unclear what happened to their shareholdings. Those concerned are reputedly contractually only able to sell their shares at the price they originally paid for them. Shareholders , including shareholders who have inherited shares, are: Jane Asher Elizabeth Cook executor of the estate of Lord Faringdon Ian Hislop (also a director) Private Eye (Productions) Ltd Anthony Rushton (also a director) executor of the estate of Sarah Seymour The Private Eye Trust Thomas Peter Usborne Brock van den Bogaerde (a nephew of Bogarde) Sheila Molnar Geoff Elwell (also the company secretary). Within its pages