A LAW student has lost a damages claim for defamation against a bank which he alleged publicly branded him as a potential criminal.
Darren Reid now faces a €15,000 bill for his own legal costs and those of Allied Irish Banks, which successfully defeated his claim over a two-day trial in the Circuit Civil Court.
Mr Justice Matthew Deery said Mr Reid had failed to prove his allegation that bank clerk Gráinne Hurley screamed when she saw him, threw her hands in the air, and shouted: “I’m not serving you. You have been on Crimeline” and had run off.
The Circuit Court president said the weight of the evidence was firmly against Mr Reid, a second-year law student of Lansdowne Valley, Slieve Bloom Road, Drimnagh, Dublin.
He said Ms Hurley had denied saying such words and a colleague, Elizabeth Weldon Donnelly, who had been working alongside her, had not heard her scream nor had she seen Ms Hurley run off. She was aware there had been some sort of rumpus going on.
The judge said Mr Reid had entered the Grafton Street branch of AIB on October 15th, 2009, to ask the bank to desist from offering him increased loan facilities and complain about overdraft excess charges on his account.
He accepted that if the words complained of had been spoken, they would have been defamatory in that they would have led other bank customers to think Mr Reid, when approaching the customer service desk, was a person with criminal intent or with a criminal background.
What was alleged to have been said had been seriously disputed and denied by Ms Hurley, who said Mr Reid had become loud, angry and aggressive when complaining about his overdraft facility.
She had sought the assistance of another official, Hugh Dunlop, who said Mr Reid was angry because the bank had allowed his overdraft to exceed its limit and had then added fees and charges. Mr Reid had left behind a mini statement which had been printed out at a machine in the bank.
The judge said Philip Mulhall, a member of the bank’s debt recovery unit, had been able to link the details of the mini statement with Mr Reid’s bank records. Mr Reid had denied having the mini statement and claimed Ms Hurley had screamed and run off before he had even spoken to her.
Dismissing Mr Reid’s claim and awarding costs against him, Judge Deery said the evidence called on behalf of the bank had been much more persuasive than that of Mr Reid who, the court accepted, was a man of high repute.