The High Court has dismissed Enoch Burke’s defamation claim against the Sunday Independent’s publisher, editor and journalist over a 2022 article about his time in Mountjoy Prison. Mr Justice Rory Mulcahy ruled that the article’s ordinary meaning was not capable of injuring Burke’s reputation. He said that even if it could have done so, it did not injure his reputation as it stood when the article appeared.
The article said Burke had been moved within the prison because he was annoying other prisoners by repeatedly expressing his religious views, and that the move was for his safety. The defendants admitted that claims about the reason for the move were inaccurate. The judge also accepted Burke’s unchallenged evidence that he had not annoyed other prisoners and had a good relationship with them. The article’s seven disputed paragraphs were untrue, he concluded.
The judge found that a reasonable reader would understand the article to say that Burke repeatedly expressed his religious views in prison, annoying some prisoners enough that they might threaten violence, and that prison authorities placed him elsewhere to avoid a risk to him. But he held that this meaning was not capable of being defamatory: expressing religious views, even in a way that might annoy others, did not by itself tend to injure a person’s reputation.
In a separate, alternative analysis, the judge concluded that the article could not have injured Burke’s reputation at the time of publication. He considered the public circumstances then known, including that Burke had been imprisoned for contempt after continuing to attend Wilson’s Hospital School despite a court order requiring him to stay away. The judge stressed that this did not mean a person found in contempt could never be defamed; he found that this particular allegation was less serious than matters already affecting Burke’s reputation.
The judge also considered the newspaper’s statutory defence of fair and reasonable publication. He said it would not have been available because, although stories about Burke were newsworthy, the article did not further a matter of public interest or deliver a public benefit. The defendants no longer pursued their qualified privilege defence by the end of the trial.
The newspaper removed the online article on 12 October 2022 and published a correction and apology on 1 January 2023. The judge considered the removal timely but found the apology unduly delayed. He ordered the claim dismissed. His provisional view was that the defendants should receive their costs, subject to written submissions from Burke within ten days if he sought a different order, followed by a response within ten days. A costs ruling would issue if required.