The High Court has ordered Enoch Burke to pay the costs of the defendants in his defamation proceedings, including reserved costs and the costs of written submissions on costs. The amount is to be adjudicated if the parties cannot agree.
Mr Justice Rory Mulcahy made the order in a ruling delivered on 16 July 2024. It followed the court’s 13 June 2024 judgment dismissing Burke’s claim that an article published by the defendants in October 2022 had defamed him.
After the June judgment, the court had indicated that the defendants appeared entitled to costs and invited Burke to make submissions on whether a different order should be made. He argued that the court should make no order as to costs, citing the circumstances of the case and the defendants’ conduct during the proceedings. The defendants argued that the usual rule should apply because they had succeeded in having the claim dismissed in full.
The judge said section 169(1) of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 made costs for the entirely successful party the starting point, unless the circumstances justified a departure. He found that the defendants had been entirely successful, despite not winning every argument.
Burke relied on matters including the article’s inaccuracy, the defendants’ failure to check its accuracy with him or his family before publication, delay in issuing a correction and apology, and their reliance on defences of qualified privilege and fair and reasonable publication. The judge said those matters did not justify departing from the usual rule. He found that the defendants had not pleaded the truth of the article’s allegations, and that the late abandonment of qualified privilege had not clearly added materially to Burke’s costs because the issues overlapped with the fair and reasonable publication defence.
The ruling also addressed Burke’s criticisms of the earlier judgment. The judge said those complaints were not relevant to the costs decision and briefly explained why he considered the issues had been addressed. The costs order was not a reconsideration of the June judgment dismissing the defamation claim.