The High Court has allowed Dylan Hughes to add Formpress Publishing Limited to his defamation proceedings over a Leinster Leader article that wrongly identified him as a man before Naas District Court.
Mr Justice Cian Ferriter gave a direction under section 11(2)(c)(ii) of the Statute of Limitations, permitting the claim against Formpress to proceed outside the usual one-year period. The direction is limited to allowing Formpress to be joined to the existing case against Iconic Newspapers Limited. It does not decide whether the article was defamatory or award damages.
The article appeared in print and online on 19 October 2021. It named Mr Hughes and gave his home address while reporting on a man accused of breaching bail. The parties agreed he had been wrongly identified. His sister contacted the newspaper shortly after publication, and a clarification appeared in the next edition on 26 October. Mr Hughes said it did not apologise or distance him from the allegations.
Mr Hughes first sued Iconic, after the Leinster Leader website and a business-name search led him to understand that Iconic was the publisher. In July 2023, Iconic’s solicitors said Formpress was the publisher. Mr Hughes then sought permission to add Formpress, whose position was that the application was procedurally defective and that the delay was not adequately explained.
Formpress argued that further company and internet searches would have revealed its role. It also submitted that it might rely on qualified privilege, and that a clarification and removal of the article from its online archive had reduced any harm.
Justice Ferriter rejected Formpress’s preliminary procedural objection. He said Formpress had received the application, filed evidence and submissions, and appeared at the hearing, so it had suffered no prejudice from the procedure used.
On the application’s merits, the judge found that the newspaper website repeatedly identified Iconic as publisher in a formal privacy policy. He accepted that Mr Hughes had made appropriate inquiries and had a sufficiently good reason for not suing Formpress within a year. The judge also found no evidence that delay had made relevant evidence unavailable or impaired Formpress’s ability to mount defences other than the limitation defence.
The judge considered the alleged defamation reasonably serious and concluded that the prejudice to Mr Hughes if he could not pursue Formpress significantly outweighed prejudice to the company. He directed that Formpress be joined to the existing proceedings, which Mr Hughes intends to maintain jointly against both companies. The underlying defamation claim remains to be determined.