The Supreme Court set aside a €1.872 million jury award to Monica Leech in her defamation action against Independent Newspapers (Ireland) Limited and, by a majority, reassessed damages at €1.25 million.
The appeal concerned damages only. A jury had found that a series of Evening Herald articles published in 2004 meant Ms Leech had an extra-marital affair with then Minister Martin Cullen. It unanimously rejected a separate proposed meaning that she travelled to New York with Mr Cullen for a United Nations conference and failed to attend. The jury awarded €1.872 million.
The newspaper challenged the award as excessive and disproportionate. It argued that awards in other defamation cases and personal injury cases offered useful comparisons. Ms Leech’s submissions stressed the seriousness of the allegations, the repeated publications, their effect on her personal and professional reputation, and the newspaper’s continued defence of the case.
In the judgment delivered by McKechnie J., he concluded that the award could not stand because it was disproportionate to the consequences of the publications. He described the articles as a sequence of eleven publications across nine editions over about two weeks, and referred to unchallenged evidence that Ms Leech and her family suffered verbal and physical assaults linked to them. He also noted the jury’s finding that the affair allegation was baseless and that the articles suggested it had advanced her business career.
McKechnie J. would have ordered a retrial limited to damages, saying the jury’s role in defamation cases should be preserved. That was a minority view. The majority judgment, delivered by Dunne J. and concurred in by Murray J., reassessed damages at €1.25 million. The court therefore substituted that amount for the jury’s award; it did not order a new trial on damages.
The Supreme Court judgment was delivered on 19 December 2014. The source supplied here contains McKechnie J.’s judgment and refers to the majority disposition and amount, but does not include Dunne J.’s separate reasoning.