A man has been awarded a record €10m (£8.5m) damages by an Irish high court jury after they decided he was defamed by a press release.
The case concerned a release by the mining company, Kenmare Resources, about one of its former executives, Donal Kinsella.
It said that Kinsella was resigning after an "incident" in Mozambique in which he sleep-walked naked into a female colleague's bedroom.
The jury found that the description falsely inferred that Kinsella had made inappropriate advances to the woman, company secretary Deirdre Corcoran.
Outside court, 67-year-old Kinsella said he was "exhilarated and vindicated" by the verdict.
Kinsella had sued Kenmare and its chairman Charles Carvill over the press release that was issued by the company in July 2007.
He claimed that the release made him an international "laughing stock". He had previously been exonerated of sexual impropriety allegations by an independent internal inquiry.
After a six-day hearing, the jury took just over three hours of deliberation to award Kinsella €9m in compensatory damages and €1m for aggravated damages.
Kenmare's counsel, Bill Shipsey, described the award as "off the Richter scale" and asked the judge, Justice Eamon de Valera, to stay the award pending a supreme court appeal.
The judge agreed to the delay providing €500,000 was paid out immediately to Kinsella.
Source: Irish Times
