The High Court has refused Gemma O’Doherty’s application to dismiss a case brought by Edel Campbell over the alleged use of her deceased son’s image, ruling that the case should proceed to trial.
In a judgment delivered on 29 April 2025, Mr Justice Nolan rejected O’Doherty’s arguments that the proceedings were bound to fail and that Campbell’s GoFundMe funding amounted to unlawful maintenance or champerty. The court did not decide the underlying allegations or whether Campbell will succeed at trial.
Campbell alleges that O’Doherty used and distributed her son’s image and falsely claimed in an article that he died as a result of the COVID-19 vaccine. O’Doherty denies making the alleged claim. Campbell seeks a declaration and injunction concerning use of her son’s image, as well as damages under several legal grounds. Those are claims and allegations, not findings made in this application.
O’Doherty’s motion, issued in December 2024, also relied on freedom of expression and press freedom, and arguments concerning public coroners’ hearings. The judge said O’Doherty was entitled in principle to report on coroners’ court matters and to freedom of speech so long as she acted within the law. But those points could not, at this preliminary stage, establish that Campbell’s action was frivolous or bound to fail; they may be matters for the trial.
The judgment records that a June 2023 order had restrained O’Doherty, pending trial, from publishing specified confidential personal information about Campbell or her son, including medical records, and from encouraging others to do so. The December 2024 motion did not seek to lift that order; the judgment did not vary it.
On funding, the judge distinguished champerty, where a funder seeks a share of litigation proceeds, from maintenance, which involves supporting litigation without a recognised justification. The evidence before the court included Campbell’s affidavit that donors gave for charitable reasons. The judge found no evidence that donors expected financial gain and held that the proceedings were not champertous. He said the evidence suggested the donations were for a charitable purpose and refused to strike out the case on maintenance or champerty grounds.
The judge stressed that Campbell must still prove the facts and imputations she alleges at trial. He expressed a provisional view that she should recover the costs of the application and listed the matter for 14 May 2025 for submissions on the final order and costs. The judgment does not record the outcome of that later listing.