The High Court has dismissed five libel actions brought by businessman Dermot Desmond over Sunday Times articles published between 1997 and 1999, after finding that the cases had remained dormant for years without adequate explanation.
The proceedings concerned reports about matters including Ben Dunne and the payments tribunal, payments involving companies associated with the Haughey family, the Telecom Éireann Ballsbridge site and Celtic Helicopters.
All five actions had effectively stopped progressing after correspondence about discovery in October 2000.
Mr Desmond accepted that the delay was inordinate and inexcusable. He said he had acted on senior counsel’s advice to await findings from the Moriarty Tribunal because those findings might affect the litigation.
Ms Justice Dunne noted that Mr Desmond later decided the tribunal was taking too long and reactivated other defamation proceedings in 2005 and 2006. However, he took no comparable step in these five cases and gave no explanation for that further period of inactivity.
The court applied the established test for dismissing proceedings for delay. Once delay is found to be both inordinate and inexcusable, the court must decide whether the balance of justice favours allowing the case to continue.
The judge accepted that an important factor weighed in Mr Desmond’s favour: the defendants had pleaded justification, meaning they asserted that specified aspects of the publications were true. If the actions were dismissed, those pleas would remain untested.
But that factor was not decisive. Defamation cases, the court said, require particular expedition because their purpose is to vindicate reputation. Some of the underlying events already dated back to the 1980s and 1990s, and the prolonged delay created a moderate degree of prejudice through the passage of time.
The judge placed significant weight on the unexplained failure to revive these proceedings when Mr Desmond resumed other libel cases. She concluded that the defendants were entitled to finality and dismissed all five actions.