The High Court has refused to stay a defamation action brought by Declan Ganley and Rivada Networks Ltd against three CNN group companies, finding that proceedings in the proposed Washington, DC forum are now time-barred and that the plaintiffs acted reasonably by not issuing a protective claim there.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Garrett Simons on 11 February 2025, also refused a separate application to strike out Cable News International Ltd and Turner Broadcasting System Europe Ltd. Their potential responsibility for publication remains to be determined at trial or, possibly, at a preliminary hearing on agreed facts.
The action concerns a CNN news story published in October 2020 as a television broadcast and website article. The plaintiffs allege that it conveyed that they had acted corruptly or improperly to secure a lucrative US defence spectrum lease and sought to influence the US government. The defendants say they will rely on defences that the story was substantially true and concerned a matter of public interest. These allegations and defences have not been decided in this application.
The defendants accepted that the Irish courts had jurisdiction but argued that the United States was the more appropriate forum. After an earlier adjournment for expert evidence on foreign law, the parties’ experts agreed that claims in either the Federal Courts or Local Courts in Washington, DC would be subject to a one-year limitation period that had expired. The defendants would not waive that time bar.
Justice Simons said the court could assume for this motion, without deciding the point definitively, that a foreign time bar would not always prevent a stay. He considered whether the plaintiffs had acted reasonably in failing to issue a protective claim in Washington. He concluded that they had: their case was confined to reputational loss from publication in Ireland, one plaintiff was an Irish citizen habitually resident here, and the other was an Irish registered company. Washington was not such an obvious alternative that the plaintiffs were unreasonable not to file there.
The defendants did not identify Washington as the proposed forum until their stay motion in December 2022, after its limitation period had expired. Their earlier correspondence had challenged the Irish courts’ jurisdiction. The judge concluded that staying the Irish action would deny the plaintiffs access to a court in either jurisdiction.
On the strike-out motion, the court said deciding which CNN entities were responsible for publication would require findings of fact and statutory interpretation unsuitable for summary determination. It refused the motion. The judge’s provisional view was that the plaintiffs should recover their legal costs; final orders were listed for 25 February 2025 at 10.45am.