Newspaper to pay for Upsetting Murdered Man's Mother

Cork Circuit Court saw a rather significant case decided in a very significant way on Thursday, April 19 2007. No journalist was present, which was odd given that the defendant was The Irish Times.

The plaintiff Mrs O'Connell complained that the newspaper had reported that her murdered son had been described by police as a drug dealer, that this was false, had been negligently published and that she had suffered psychological damage as a result, for which she sought compensation.

The newspaper pleaded that it owed no duty of care in these circumstances. Indeed, the media's special role in a democratic society meant that there were very limited circumstances in which it could be liable for anything published, and that these circumstances were confined to the defamation context. There was no actionable defamation here as the alleged victim of it was deceased.

The court (per Judge Con Murphy) decided that the plaintiff had established her case. There was a duty of care, no reasonable care was taken, resulting in substantial and predictable injury. He awarded damages of EUR 15,000.

The decision, which apparently has no precedent in the common-law world, seems quite reasonable to me. It will, I understand from reliable sources, be appealed to the High Court, and all right-thinking people will hope that that court will confirm the decision and thereby give it binding status.

Distinguished author and adviser to Government, Michael McGrath, instructed by Vincent Toher and Company, appeared for the plaintiff. John Lucey, media law expert, was for the newspaper, instructed by Hayes & Company.

I will speak at another time of my pivotal role in bringing this result about. Mr McGrath and I regularly discuss media law, inter multa alia. For regular readers, I hardly need to add that one of the leitmotivs of my outpourings on that area of jurisprudence is my advocacy of stronger media laws. No doubt due to the extreme busy-ness of my life generally, I do not specifically recall this case coming up in those discussions, but I am confident that it must have done.

It is thus rather peculiar that Mr McGrath is having some difficulty in recalling my constant encouragement of his persistence with this ground-breaking case: perhaps he is not as self-aware as I am !