The High Court dismissed a woman’s appeal against the Circuit Court’s 2011 decision to strike out her slander claim against three men associated with the Killarney Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The court treated two applications about the appeal as the appeal itself, which the judge said the woman had always wished to pursue despite procedural difficulties as a lay litigant.
The woman’s claim arose from events dating to 2004. She said two elders visited her home and accused her of slander, and that the third defendant gave evidence at a congregation meeting. She was disfellowshipped. According to her account, the congregation’s appeal committee later changed its decision after she complained to the Jehovah’s Witnesses branch office. She maintained that she had not slandered anyone.
She also alleged that the first defendant called her a slanderer in 2009 and wrote to her that December. She said that after she left the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2010, former friends who were members were forbidden to speak to her. She sought damages and a declaration that she had not committed slander. The defendants argued that the dispute concerned church discipline outside the courts’ jurisdiction, that the claim was out of time, and that it pleaded neither publication nor special damage.
The claim had been struck out by the Circuit Court in June 2011 on three grounds: that the issues raised concerned church discipline, that no publication to an identified third party was pleaded, and that no special damage was pleaded. The woman’s first attempted appeal was dismissed in November 2011 because it had not been brought in the High Court sitting in Dublin, as required by section 37 of the Courts of Justice Act 1936. The Master of the High Court later purported to extend the appeal deadline. The defendants sought to overturn that order as beyond the Master’s jurisdiction.
In deciding the appeal, the High Court held that the 2004 events were outside the three-year limitation period for slander claims, given that proceedings were issued on 17 January 2011. As to the alleged 2009 letter, the judge said publication to the woman alone was not publication for defamation purposes. The judgment also found no pleaded publication or special damage in relation to the 2009 and 2010 events involving the named defendants. It concluded that the pleadings disclosed no cause of action against them and dismissed the claim. The court did not decide whether the underlying allegations of slander were true.