Student faces over €1m costs in taxi video case

Judge says court needs further information on ‘rather large’ legal bill

A student who went to court to permanently remove an internet video falsely accusing him of taxi fare evasion is facing a bill for legal costs believed to be over €1m.

Eoin McKeogh yesterday told a High Court judge: “I am a student of no means.”

He told Mr Justice Paul Gilligan he thought he would have to pay his legal costs at the end of the proceedings, which began two years ago and are still ongoing. He represented himself in court yesterday.

Solicitor Paul Lambert of Merrion Legal Solicitors, Dublin, who represented Mr McKeogh at the start of his injunction proceedings, now wants his bill of costs to be submitted for taxation, but the court heard Mr McKeogh would not sign a form to allow that happen.

The taxing master decides on legal costs and the final bill to be paid.

Counsel for Mr Lambert, Ronan Upton, said the bill was “rather large”. He said the nature of the action meant there were significant legal costs involved.

In May 2013, Mr Justice Micheal Peart made the order in the case brought by the 23-year-old DCU student, against YouTube, Google, Facebook, and a number of websites over the video and accompanying material which wrongly identified Mr McKeogh as a man leaving a taxi without paying the fare in Monkstown, Dublin.

Mr McKeogh, a student of Japanese and business, sought a mandatory injunction requiring the internet companies to permanently remove the video and other material, having previously acquired a temporary order preventing its republishing.

Mr Justice Peart ordered that experts for Mr Mc-Keogh meet with experts for the internet firms on how to go about taking the material down permanently on a worldwide basis.

The judge previously found Mr McKeogh was grossly defamed in the video because he was incontrovertibly not the person in it.

Mr Justice Peart said after the taxi driver involved had posted the video asking if anyone could identify the person in his cab, one person wrongly named Mr McKeogh, who had been in Japan at the time.

An appeal was later lodged against the High Court decision.

Last December, Mr Justice Peart said he would grant a stay, pending appeal. The interim orders preventing republishing of the clip must remain in place until the appeal is heard, the judge ordered.

A full hearing of Mr McKehoe’s High Court action for damages and other orders arising from the clips, which was initiated in January 2012, remains on hold pending the appeals.

Yesterday, Mr Justice Paul Gilligan said the court must have more information on the matter of the bill of costs and he instructed both sides to file affidavits. The case will come before the court again on October 14.