AN ACTION against the Sunday Worldnewspaper over alleged defamation and breach of privacy of the partner of David Agnew has been adjourned until tomorrow.
Evidence on behalf of Ruth Hickey, the partner of Mr Agnew who is ex-husband of actor Twink, Adele King, ended yesterday after which lawyers for the Sunday Worldsaid it would not be calling any witnesses.
The President of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, said as evidence had ended he would hear legal submissions tomorrow on behalf of both sides.
The judge rejected an application by Turlough O’Donnell SC, for Ms Hickey, to impose reporting restrictions on the case on grounds that the manner in which the case was being reported represented a further breach of his client’s privacy.
Mr O’Donnell said Ms Hickey has a constitutional right to privacy and the manner in which the case was being reported should be taken into account when the court was addressing the issue of damages. In the meantime, he was seeking reporting restrictions as the case did not just relate to breach of privacy via publication of photographs of Ms Hickey and her son but also related to other material which was published.
"There may be some confusion in the press that the mere fact it is said in court, either accurate or inaccurate, gives it privilege," he said. Eoin McCullough, for the Sunday World, said he had never heard of a case where publicity in other newspapers could be admitted in assessing damages in a case like this.
Mr Justice Kearns said it had occurred to him an application for reporting restrictions might have been made at the outset of the case by Ms Hickey’s lawyers but no such application had been made.
Now that it was “all out there”, he saw no value in hearing an application to impose reporting restrictions, the judge said. He added he was aware of the sensitivities in this case which was an important one in which the right to privacy had to be balanced with freedom of speech.
Ms Hickey told the court on Tuesday she was defamed by an article published under the headline “Twink’s Ex Shows Off Love Child”. That article meant her child was a bastard and she was a whore when neither was the case, she said.
Ms Hickey, Archers Wood, Castaheany, Dublin 15, also claims her constitutional and European convention rights to privacy, and that of her son, had been breached when photos of her, Mr Agnew and her baby, leaving a births registry office, had been published.
The Sunday Worlddenies the claims.