Leech argues €1.87m award not excessive

Communications consultant Monica Leech was "grossly wronged" in articles published in the Evening Herald and should not be deprived of her €1.87 million libel award against Independent Newspapers, the Supreme Court was told yesterday.

The award was not excessive, Frank Callanan SC, for Ms Leech, argued.

He was opposing the appeal by Independent Newspapers against the award made by a High Court jury in 2009 after it found a number of articles run in November and December 2004 in the Evening Herald – published by Independent Newspapers – libelled Ms Leech in that they wrongly meant she had been having an affair with then environment minister Martin Cullen.

Independent Newspapers pleaded justification on grounds the article had raised legitimate questions on matters of public interest in relation to how Ms Leech got government public relations consultancy contracts.

Independent Newspapers wants the Supreme Court to set aside the award as disproportionately high and the court to assess new damages, Eoin McCullough SC said yesterday. Ms Leech had already received €750,000, along with €100,000 in costs, pending determination of the appeal, he said.

If a retrial was ordered, that money would have to be paid back by Ms Leech in advance of the retrial, he added.

Mr Callanan said the award was not disproportionate in the context of case law establishing the test for proportionality of such awards.

Independent Newspapers, he added, had elected to level false allegations of the most serious kind in a sustained and deliberate campaign against Ms Leech over a two-week period when the articles were published.

Although the defendant claimed this was not the grossest and most serious of libels, there was not a general or fixed range of gravity of defamatory remarks.

Trial evidence
Mr Callanan referred to evidence at the trial by Ms Leech about incidents in her home town of Waterford where she and her son were attacked in public by people who had been reading the Herald articles.

This was a “double-edged” libel seeking to attack her moral character and to suggest she would have an affair in order to advance her career, he argued. That was personally and professionally “grossly demeaning”.

The Supreme Court should be extremely guarded about cross-referencing awards in personal injury cases with defamation awards as had been suggested by the defendant, he added.

Mr McCullough, in reply to questions from Mr Justice John Murray, said it had been accepted “the affair meaning” from the articles was defamatory but legitimate questions were raised as to her appointment to public contracts.

While his team had sought to put a number of individual questions to the jury, including whether the articles meant she had an affair and whether legitimate questions were raised, the trial judge had decided the questions should be limited to asking the jury to decide whether the articles meant she had had an affair.

There was no evidence given to the court concerning actual damage to Ms Leech’s business which, Mr McCullough added, was a start-up at the time of the articles.

RTÉ's Liveline
In a separate appeal involving the same parties, Ms Leech is appealing another jury's 2007 decision to dismiss another action in which she alleged she was libelled in a report in the Irish Independent concerning a discussion on RTÉ Radio's Liveline show.

Ms Leech claimed the newspaper had libelled her by reporting “almost word for word” and “in a titillating fashion” a caller’s lewd suggestions about her and Mr Cullen.

The newspaper argued the article was protected by the defence of qualified privilege on a matter of public interest.

Ms Leech yesterday asked the Supreme Court to overturn the jury’s finding on grounds including that the judge had misdirected the jury.

Judgment has been reserved on both appeals.