O’Brien lands a blow in libel case

Denis O’Brien has scored an interim victory of sorts in an ongoing bitter libel battle with his first cousin in America.

Donald Macallister, an American who is being sued by O'Brien for making statements against him concerning the findings of the Moriarty tribunal, has had two of his three counterclaims against his Irish cousin knocked out by a judge.

The genesis of the bitterness between them, as outlined in court documents, is because Macallister's mother, O'Brien's aunt, died in the 1970s in a late-night crash with a car driven by Michael Smurfit, the packaging tycoon. Smurfit has publicly acknowledged that he was involved in the accident.

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O'Brien's father happened upon the crash scene shortly after it happened, and years later Macallister made numerous allegations in court documents over the circumstances of the accident.

The two cousins then fell out, Macallister sent comments about O’Brien and Moriarty to telecoms officials in countries where Digicel operates, and the libel case was born.

Documents continue to be filed weekly in the fascinating dust-up, including one recently by Tom Reynolds, in-house lawyer at Digicel, which is also party to proceedings. It included a rather amusing email in which Reynolds described trying to talk to O'Brien, but that "it's not always easy" to reach him.