The High Court has refused to set aside a subpoena requiring a journalist to attend a civil trial and produce material about a 2008 newspaper article. The journalist need not identify his confidential sources and may redact identifying details from his notes and memoranda.
The ruling, delivered by Mr Justice Barr on 25 June 2015, concerns an action brought by Katherine Boyle against the Governor of St Patrick’s Institution, the Irish Prison Service, the Minister for Justice and Law Reform, Ireland and the Attorney General. Boyle was a teacher seconded to work in the Prison Service and taught at St Patrick’s Institution, Mountjoy Prison, Dublin.
Her action arises from an incident on 3 September 2008, when a mobile phone was found beneath her bra strap as she passed through the prison entrance scanning machine. Boyle says its presence was inadvertent and denies intending to bring it into the prison. The defendants dispute her account. The judge said the trial was at a very early stage and gave no further account of the incident.
Boyle alleges the defendants wrongfully disclosed information about the incident to a journalist at the Irish Daily Star, leading to an article published on 9 September 2008. The defendants pleaded that, in response to a query from the newspaper, an Irish Prisons Service press officer confirmed a staff member had been caught carrying a mobile phone and suspended pending an investigation. Boyle’s case alleges that the disclosure breached her rights and caused personal injury and distress; these remain allegations, not findings in this ruling.
The journalist, Michael O’Toole, applied to have a subpoena set aside. It required him to give evidence and bring notes, records and reports concerning the incident and an article headlined “Phone in Bra Jail Smuggler Busted”. The court rejected his application, finding the article relevant to Boyle’s case. Her lawyers were entitled to ask which parts of the article came from the press officer and which came from other sources. The judge also rejected objections based on the witness fee, notice and alleged irrelevance, and did not consider the document request oppressive.
On source protection, the judge balanced the journalist’s interest in confidentiality against Boyle’s interest in disclosure. He concluded she could still argue that the information had, on the balance of probabilities, been leaked by a servant or agent of the defendants without knowing the source’s identity. The court therefore ruled that O’Toole need not reveal his confidential sources, while requiring him to bring copies of his notes and memoranda, with any source-identifying parts redacted.