An appeal by the Sunday Times newspaper arising out of the libel case taken against it by Mr Albert Reynolds concluded in the House of Lords yesterday and a decision is expected in October.
The newspaper was appealing on a legal issue of qualified privilege which it claimed it had when it published an article in November 1994 at the time the Fianna Fail-Labour coalition collapsed and Mr Reynolds resigned as Taoiseach. Mr Reynolds won a retrial last year on appeal.
Lord Steyne, one of the five law lords hearing the appeal, yesterday asked if, procedurally, in the retrial they would be going back to the position they were in on the day before the first trial began. Lord Lester QC, for the Sunday Times, agreed that this would be so.
The House of Lords usually takes six to eight weeks to deliver its judgments but as the summer recess begins at the end of July, it is more likely that it will be deferred until October.
Lord Nicholls, presiding, said at the conclusion of submissions that it was a very important case and they would report the position to the House of Lords in due course.
In the original trial in November 1996, the jury found that Mr Reynolds had been libelled but awarded him zero damages, which the judge altered to one penny.
Lord Lester said yesterday that the alleged libel appeared in the English edition of the newspaper and not the Irish edition. The other Irish newspapers at the time carried far more damaging articles about Mr Reynolds but he chose to sue none of them. He chose to sue only the Sunday Times. The newspaper in this case was unable to subpoena witnesses, including Mr Dick Spring, as it was unable to compel them to appear as they were outside the jurisdiction.
"This point was put before the jury and the articles (in the Irish newspapers) shown to them and this is probably why he was awarded zero damages," Lord Lester stated.
Mr Andrew Caldecott QC, for Mr Reynolds, said that Mr Reynolds had said in evidence at the time that he had not read the Irish articles.
Lord Lester said that his submissions did not give carte blanche to irresponsible journalism or the publication of false attacks upon the character and reputation or public men and women. They were directed to maximising the communication of true information to the public.
The dispute between the parties was how best that aim was to be achieved in a manner which struck a fair balance between the two rights: on the one hand to free expression and the exception necessary to protect an individual's reputation against irresponsible attack and injury. Lord Lester asked the law lords to allow the appeal and declare that publication on a matter concerning government and political affairs attracted qualified privilege.
He also asked that they declare that such a privilege could be defeated by proof by the person taking the case of a lack of honest belief in the truth of the publication, including reckless disregard of the truth. Thirdly, he asked that they direct that the issue of qualified privilege be tried before the jury at the retrial.
Mr Caldecott said the right to reputation was itself a form of liberty. It could not be seen just as a right. It was also a freedom. "It is not right to see it as a simple competition between the two rights of freedom of expression and the right to protect a reputation."
He asked the law lords to reject the privilege contended for on the grounds that it paid insufficient regard to the right to reputation in effectively removing it entirely for all those libelled in a political context.
Also, it paid insufficient regard to the importance in the public interest of the public being informed of the truth of how those responsible for government conducted themselves. It would render substantially redundant the defences of fair comment and justification in the political context and also had no regard to the problem of undisclosed sources.