The Supreme Court published a judgment setting out Justice William McKechnie’s view that Martin McDonagh’s defamation case against Sunday Newspapers Limited should have gone to a full retrial. The parties had settled the litigation minutes before judgment was due, so the court said there would be no further proceedings between them.
The dispute arose from a newspaper article containing allegations that Mr McDonagh was a drug dealer, a loan shark, a tax evader and a criminal. At the original High Court trial, a jury found the newspaper had proved the tax evasion and criminal allegations, but had not proved the drug dealing and loan shark allegations. It awarded Mr McDonagh €900,000 in damages.
The Court of Appeal set aside the jury’s finding on drug dealing and declared that the evidence established that allegation. It ordered a retrial on the loan shark allegation. The Supreme Court later reinstated the original jury’s findings on both allegations. In his earlier judgment in the appeal, Justice McKechnie considered the damages award disproportionate.
His second judgment focused on a separate question put to the jury under section 22 of the Defamation Act 1961: whether the allegations not proved materially injured Mr McDonagh’s reputation given the allegations that were proved. The jury’s recorded answers did not include an answer to that question, although it proceeded to assess damages. The trial judge said the jury had not answered it “as such”.
Justice McKechnie concluded that the question had to be answered expressly and that the jury’s damages assessment did not show what its answer would have been. He said the gap meant a new jury would need to consider the evidence on all issues, including whether the newspaper had proved the allegations. A retrial confined to the unanswered question or to damages would not be workable, in his view.
He acknowledged that a full retrial would remove the original jury’s findings in Mr McDonagh’s favour on the drug dealing and loan shark allegations. He nevertheless concluded that the same jury needed to assess the section 22 issue and damages after hearing all the evidence.
The published judgment is Justice McKechnie’s view, not an order for a retrial. The parties’ settlement ended the litigation, and the judge’s proposed concluding order was that he would have ordered a full retrial.