The High Court refused Mercury Engineering and two directors an interim injunction to stop defendants communicating allegedly false or misleading information about them. Mr Justice Roderick Murphy said the affidavit evidence did not satisfy the court that the challenged communications were unjustified. He stressed that the decision did not prejudge any damages the plaintiffs might recover at trial.
The motion, dated 26 January 2011, sought to restrain the defendants from communicating such material to third parties, including people with business ties to Mercury. The plaintiffs’ underlying proceedings claim damages for defamation, interference with contracts by inducement and conspiracy to injure their business and reputation. Those claims remain to be tried; the ruling concerned only interim restraint of publication.
The application followed a similar 2010 motion by Mercury against McCool Controls and Engineering and Eugene McCool, also known as Finn. That earlier motion was refused by Ryan J. on 29 July 2010. The current application added two Mercury directors as plaintiffs and seven other defendants, and relied on further emails circulated after the earlier proceedings.
Mercury alleged that the emails, some sent under fictitious names, widened a campaign against the company and its directors. Its evidence described allegations about the Terminal 2 project at Dublin Airport, including claims concerning unpaid subcontractor accounts, the project’s tender price and fire certification. Mercury said the communications threatened its business relationships and reputation. The McCool defendants disputed that account and maintained that their statements reflected a genuine commercial dispute over payment and contractual performance. They said they believed the information to be true and relied on justification.
The judge said the affidavit evidence showed an attempt, particularly by the McCool defendants, to escalate the dispute through means outside the contractual process. That alone did not justify excluding them from doing so. He noted that at least 24 contractors had been involved in the Terminal 2 work, and that cash flow was critical to subcontractors. He said negotiation and alternative dispute resolution were preferable to litigation.
Applying the principles governing interim injunctions in defamation cases, the court found the defendants’ affidavits went beyond a bare assertion of justification. The evidence included factual matters and opinions relied on in the disputed statements, and the court was not satisfied at this stage that the alleged libels were untrue. It also found that an email reference to the penalty for perjury was ambiguous and did not necessarily imply that Mercury’s staff would perjure themselves. The motion did not distinguish the directors’ positions or seek separate relief for them, and no affidavit had been sworn by the second plaintiff.
The court refused the injunction. It left the defamation and other claims for trial and did not decide whether the statements were ultimately true, defamatory or actionable. The judgment noted that arbitration had been attempted and that the underlying contractual claims remained in dispute.