The High Court has refused an application by the first plaintiff in a defamation action for an interlocutory order requiring a video to be removed from YouTube and other platforms. The judge held that the plaintiff had not met the legal threshold for an order under section 33 of the Defamation Act 2009. The defamation action itself was not decided.
The video, titled “the Sovereign Movement and its links to MMS Bleach”, was made and posted by the defendant on or shortly before 23 June 2018. The plaintiffs issued a plenary summons on 29 June, claiming damages and orders requiring removal of the video and unspecified blogs. The first plaintiff later brought the motion for interlocutory relief. The judge dealt with it as his application alone, saying he was not entitled to seek orders on behalf of the second plaintiff.
At the hearing, the focus was on the video. The first plaintiff alleged that it linked him to child torture and abuse, and to procuring or administering MMS to children. He said he had no connection with MMS. He did not claim that an alleged association with the Sovereign Movement, by itself, was defamatory. The defendant argued that her words did not carry the alleged meanings or any defamatory meaning, and relied on a defence of honest opinion and fair comment.
The judgment described MMS as a mixture of sodium chlorite solution and citric acid that produces chlorine dioxide, a bleach. It noted warnings about MMS from the US Food and Drug Administration and Ireland’s Health Products Regulatory Authority. The defendant said her video aimed to show a connection between the Sovereign Movement and MMS; the judgment records that she had campaigned against claims that MMS treats or cures autism.
Justice Allen considered the statutory test for an order prohibiting publication. He concluded that the plaintiff had to establish that the statement was defamatory and that it was very clear the defendant had no defence reasonably likely to succeed. The meaning of the video was, in his view, a matter for a jury. He said there was an issue to be tried about whether it conveyed the alleged meanings, and observed that a jury might consider the case greatly over-pleaded. He did not determine whether the video was defamatory.
The court refused the application to remove the video because the plaintiff had not satisfied the threshold for interlocutory relief. The judgment does not resolve the underlying claim for damages or determine whether any of the pleaded meanings should go to a jury.