The Supreme Court has set aside jury verdicts for newspaper defendants in two libel actions brought by Alan Bradley and Wayne Bradley and directed a retrial. The appeals concerned a 2004 Star Sunday article alleging that two unnamed brothers led a Dublin armed robbery gang.
The newspaper denied that the article referred to either plaintiff. It did not plead a valid defence of justification, and the trial proceeded on whether the brothers were identified and, if so, whether evidence of their general reputation could reduce damages. The jury found that the article had not been published “of and concerning” either man, ending their claims.
In a judgment delivered on 1 June 2011, Mr Justice Hardiman said the trial judge had initially told the jury that reputation evidence could not be used to decide identification. Although she later recognised that jurors could consider all the evidence on that issue, the direction was not corrected. The Supreme Court held that this error caused a substantial miscarriage: the plaintiffs were entitled to have identification assessed on the basis of all the evidence.
The judgment also addressed a second article, published about two months after the first. It named the Bradleys, showed the earlier article and referred to its allegations. The Supreme Court held that the later article was capable of helping identify the subjects of the first article. Whether it did so was for a jury to decide at retrial.
The court therefore set aside the verdict and ordered a retrial on two grounds: the restriction on considering reputation evidence for identification, and the potential relevance of the later article. It did not decide whether the first article identified either plaintiff. Nor did it determine whether its allegations were true. The judgment noted that the action had proceeded without a plea of justification.