Ireland’s Independent Newspapers’ group is to challenge Irish defamation laws at the European Court of Human Rights, reports the Irish Times.
The newspaper company claims that a libel award of €1.25m (£870,000) has a “serious chilling effect” on freedom of expression.
The case arose from a series of articles published in the Dublin Evening Herald in 2004 about communications consultant Monica Leech. After the Irish high court jury decided she had been defamed, the jurors awarded her €1.87m (£1.3m).
Last December, Ireland’s supreme court reduced the figure to €1.25m, which was the highest approved in a defamation action.
In papers filed at the Strasbourg court, Independent Newspapers claims the size of the damages award contravenes article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which relates to freedom of expression.
It also argues that defamation law and practice in Ireland fails to provide “adequate and effective safeguards against disproportionate awards in defamation actions.”
The publisher argues the size of the payout in the Leech case was “wholly excessive and altogether too severe.”
The Leech case pre-dated Ireland’s 2009 Defamation Act, which allowed judges to give more directions to juries on the assessment of damages.
Prior to that, juries made up their minds without direction. When the Leech jury settled on €1,872,000 it gave no analysis or breakdown of how it arrived at the figure.
In England and Wales, a ceiling of £200,000 for damages for the most serious type of defamation was set in a 2002 judgment.
In its submission to the European court, Independent Newspapers argues that the very precision of the jury award in the Leech case demonstrates its “irrationality and unpredictability, in the absence of anything in the evidence to justify a precise figure”.
The Strasbourg case is not likely to go to a hearing until next year.
Source: Irish Times
