The High Court has refused Independent Newspapers (Ireland) Limited’s application to dismiss Monica Leech’s defamation proceedings over delay, finding that the balance of justice favoured allowing the case to continue.
The application concerned a claim arising from material published on 30 January 2005. The trial was due to begin on 5 November 2015. Mr Justice Mac Eochaidh delivered this judgment on 3 November 2015, after hearing the application on 29 November 2015, according to the judgment. The source does not explain that date discrepancy.
The court identified the relevant period of inactivity as running from the defendant’s replies to particulars, dated 1 July 2008, to the plaintiff’s third notice of intention to proceed, filed on 16 July 2014. It found the delay, approximately six years, was inordinate. The plaintiff’s explanations were that she was pursuing two other defamation cases against the same defendant and had changed solicitors twice. The judge said those circumstances did not excuse the inactivity.
The defendant argued that delay had prejudiced its defence, which it described as the “Reynolds Defence”: that the publication concerned a matter of public interest and followed proper and ethical journalistic inquiry. It relied on the death of the former Sunday Independent editor, Aengus Fanning, in January 2012, and said the passage of time could impair two journalists’ memories of preparing the article and related conversations and inquiries.
The judge noted that the application’s original supporting affidavit did not identify specific prejudice. The defendant raised the editor’s death and the journalists’ asserted memory difficulties in a supplemental affidavit sworn more than a year after the motion was first brought and shortly before the hearing. The court also noted that no personal affidavits from the journalists had been provided to support the claim about their recollections. It rejected the solicitor’s assertion that prejudice was inevitable as insufficient to establish actual prejudice warranting dismissal.
The court also considered the history of the parties’ other defamation litigation. It concluded that the overall balance of justice favoured the plaintiff and refused the application to dismiss. The ruling determined only the delay application; it did not decide whether the publication was defamatory or whether the defence would succeed at trial.