The editor of the Sunday Tribune, Mr Matt Cooper, said he was delighted with the result. He said it was always a big risk for a newspaper to defend a High Court action for libel given that so many plaintiffs had been successful.
"From our own newspaper's point of view and probably from the general media's point of view this is a highly significant victory and especially due to the fact that we stood over the article on its own merits. We won on the justification of the article being correct. We are delighted that our decision was vindicated by the jury in this case," he said.
"This is a landmark ruling because I cannot remember the last time a newspaper went to court in front of a jury and won a case so certainly. This is a great day for us, and I think other newspapers will be greatly encouraged, not because they want to act irresponsibly in any way but because at times it has been so difficult for newspapers to defend what they believed were fair and accurate accounts of what had happened," he added.
Asked if there was a message for the Garda from this case he said the jury had the facts of the case laid out in front of them. "They took the meaning they wanted to take out of the article, that it was a true and fair representation of a situation, and I don't think at this stage, just in the aftermath of having received the verdict, that I should make any comments on the implications for the Garda," he said.
Afterwards, the Garda superintendent in the case declined to comment.