The High Court has ruled that The Irish Times cannot call economist Dr Joseph Stiglitz to give proposed expert evidence at the trial of Dermot Desmond’s defamation and privacy claims over 2016 Panama Papers coverage.
In a judgment delivered on 5 March 2024, Mr Justice Alexander Owens held that the proposed evidence was not relevant to issues the court must decide. The application concerned the admissibility of that evidence; it did not decide whether the newspaper’s articles were defamatory or breached Desmond’s privacy.
Desmond claims that an Irish Times article published on 7 April 2016, read alongside earlier coverage, conveyed that he was involved in financial wrongdoing. He also claims that information about him came from material taken unlawfully from Panamanian lawyers and was published in breach of his privacy. The newspaper denies liability and relies on the statutory defence of fair and reasonable publication on a matter of public interest, as well as a public interest defence to the privacy claim.
The newspaper proposed that Stiglitz, an expert in public economics and public finance, give evidence about the economic effects of offshore tax havens, the value of financial transparency and the impact of the Panama Papers disclosures. His report said such arrangements could harm markets, public finances and equality, and described economic and public benefits attributed to the disclosures.
The judge said the existence of tax havens, concerns about opaque corporate structures and the debate over tax avoidance were matters of common knowledge. The statutory defamation defence requires consideration of whether the statement was published in the course of, or for the purpose of, discussion of a subject of public interest, and whether discussion of that subject was for public benefit. The judge said this does not require proof of a measurable benefit to society or the economy from the reporting.
Owens also held that deciding whether disclosure was in the public interest as an answer to the privacy claim did not require the proposed economic-benefit evidence. He rejected Desmond’s claims that Stiglitz was partisan, but noted that The Irish Times had failed to comply with rules requiring notice of its intention to call expert evidence and the nature of that evidence.
The court directed that the matter be listed on 11 March 2024 at 10am to deal with costs. The judgment did not determine the merits of either claim or the newspaper’s defences.