A garda superintendent has appealed to the Supreme Court against a High Court jury's rejection of his claim that he was libelled by the Sunday Tribune newspaper.
Det Supt Patrick Joseph Browne was also ordered to pay the estimated £90,000 costs of his unsuccessful three-day hearing.
On February 4th last, a High Court jury found that an article in the Sunday Tribune in May 1998, which was critical of the Garda handling of a siege at Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, a year earlier, was true in substance and in fact.
The article was entitled: "Gardai warned about German man's `arsenal'." It alleged that the Garda had been warned that a German national, who shot the Co Cavan sheriff and two bailiffs as they tried to evict him and his mother from a house, had a cache of arms in his house.
The paper said it had seen a solicitor's letter informing the Garda in October 1996 - some months before the siege - that a Mr Gerrit Isenborger had an array of arms in his possession. The letter asked that the house in which he lived be searched.
Supt Browne (48), who was not named in the newspaper article, told the High Court in evidence that he had written to the solicitor who made the arms allegations saying that he needed to be in possession of detailed knowledge before he could issue a search warrant.
During the action, Supt Browne acknowledged that he had received a total of £63,000 in three libel actions. Yesterday, the Supreme Court was asked to set aside the High Court decision on the basis that the trial judge had misdirected himself in law in allowing counsel for Tribune Newspapers plc to cross-examine Supt Browne in relation to the monies received by him in respect of previous libels, which were wholly unrelated to the Sunday Tribune article.
Supt Browne also alleges that the trial judge failed to adequately put the garda's case to the jury and misdirected the jury in failing to tell it that he could not have issued a search warrant on foot of the solicitor's letter.
The Supreme Court reserved its decision on the appeal.