The Court of Appeal has dismissed Monica Leech’s libel claim against Independent Newspapers (Ireland) Limited, overturning a High Court decision that allowed the proceedings to continue.
In a judgment delivered on 27 January 2017, Ms Justice Irvine said the High Court had made legal errors when weighing the balance of justice after finding that Ms Leech’s delay was both inordinate and inexcusable. The newspaper had appealed the refusal to dismiss her claim. There was no appeal against the finding about the delay.
Ms Leech began the proceedings in April 2005 over a newspaper article published that January under the headline “Leech thinks Provo spies raided home”. The article reported that her home had been burgled in June 2004. She considered the story “a work of fiction” and sought an apology, which was not forthcoming.
The High Court identified a six-year period of delay from July 2008, when the newspaper replied to a request for particulars, until July 2014, when Ms Leech served a notice of intention to proceed. It found that period inordinate and inexcusable. Ms Leech had said she put the case on hold while pursuing two other libel actions against the same newspaper. The Court of Appeal said those cases were unrelated and could not provide countervailing circumstances in her favour.
The Court of Appeal also found the High Court had wrongly discounted the newspaper’s evidence of prejudice. The newspaper said its editor at the time, Aengus Fanning, who died in 2012, would have been a material witness on its public-interest privilege defence and the editorial process. It also argued that the journalists would face difficulty recalling their sources and enquiries years later, and that a jury would have difficulty assessing what was of public interest a decade after the events.
The court held that the newspaper’s failure to seek dismissal after Mr Fanning’s death did not, by itself, amount to acquiescence in the delay. Ms Leech had not told the newspaper she was suspending her claim, and it had taken no positive step that would have reassured her it was willing to proceed despite the delay.
Having set aside the High Court’s decision, the Court of Appeal concluded that the interests of justice warranted dismissal of the proceedings under the court’s inherent jurisdiction for delay. The judgment proposes that order; the supplied extract does not record any further formal order or costs decision.