The Monica Leech Case

Ms Leech is a public relations consultant based in Waterford, who got some valuable Government work from departments headed by local T.D., Martin Cullen. On Joe Duffy's phone-in programme, a caller casually (but in explicit terms) suggested that she might have got the work in return for sexual favours. RTE ended up paying Ms Leech EUR 250k for that in an out-of-court settlement.

The day after the broadcast, Gavin O'Reilly's Irish Independent could not resist reporting the incident, including in its report an unexpurgated verbatim repetition of the offending comment. Ms Leech, a lifetime Indo reader herself, sued for libel.

Somewhat surprisingly perhaps, she lost. The jury decided that the newspaper report had not been defamatory, which indeed, taken as a whole, it probably was not, because the newspaper made it very clear that it was a disgraceful and unfounded allegation. (Defamation consists of uttering a statement about a person which tends to lower the reputation of the subject in the eyes of right-thinking people).

All the same, I cannot help feeling that it is most regrettable that the Indo got away with this, especially as RTE did not. After all, as was pointed out during the trial, the newspaper's article was in more permanent form than the broadcast. Also, the broadcaster did not choose to publish the offensive material, whereas the newspaper did.

One other way that Mrs Leech might have sought (it is too late now) to recover damages for the wrong done to her by her favourite newspaper was that reported by me here last April.