The High Court has struck out Michael Burke’s defamation claim against Eircom Limited, trading as Eir, insofar as it concerned an alleged defamatory email in March 2015. It declined to dismiss his separate claim under the Data Protection Acts.
In a judgment delivered on 7 May 2020, Mr Justice Max Barrett ruled on Eir’s application to strike out claims brought by Burke, who represented himself. The court was not hearing the underlying dispute and made no finding on whether Eir was liable to him.
Burke’s statement of claim said Eir had defamed him in a 6 March 2015 email to the communications regulator by suggesting he had called to make a payment when none was due. He also complained that Eir’s records continued to associate a service disconnection with non-payment. Eir admitted that it disconnected his services briefly around 5 March 2015 in error, apologised, reconnected him and applied a goodwill credit.
The judge held that the defamation claim based on the 2015 email was brought outside the statutory one-year period, which can be extended by up to a further year. That part of the claim was struck out. The judgment said any separate claim concerning alleged defamation in July 2017 was for Burke to consider; it was not before the court for decision.
The July 2017 episode arose from Burke’s account that a mobile phone upgrade was initially rejected at a Currys PC World store in Swords and later at an Eir store. Eir said the issue was a systems problem unrelated to alleged past non-payment and that the phone was replaced five days after his initial request. The court did not decide between those accounts.
Burke’s data-protection claim concerned Eir’s response to a May 2016 data access request. The Data Protection Commissioner had found in December 2018 that Eir breached the statutory 40-day response period. Eir argued that Burke had already litigated the matter through that complaint. The judge rejected that argument: the Commissioner’s inquisitorial process was not adversarial litigation, had not decided whether Eir owed damages for breach of statutory duty, and did not prevent a related claim in court. The claim also covered events after the Commissioner’s complaint.
The court therefore declined to strike out the claim insofar as it related to the Data Protection Acts. That ruling allowed the claim to remain; it did not determine liability or award damages.