€900,000 libel award overturned

A €900,000 damages award made by a High Court jury against a newspaper which described a man as a drug dealer has been overturned on grounds of a “perverse” jury finding the man was not a drug dealer.

The three-judge the Court of Appeal unanimously overturned the 2008 award made to Martin McDonagh.

The €900,000 award arose out of a High Court jury finding that Mr McDonagh was libelled in a Sunday World article describing him as a “Traveller drug king” following the seizure by gardaí of IR£500,000 (€635,000) worth of cannabis and amphetamines in August 1999 in Tubbercurry, Co Sligo.

The newspaper had appealed against the award and Mr McDonagh was paid €90,000 pending the appeal.

Yesterday, the appeals court allowed the appeal of the newspaper against the entirety of the verdict.

It found an allegation of drug dealing was true and dismissed that part of his claim. However, it found there should be a retrial in relation to a second allegation of loan-sharking.

Mr Justice Gerard Hogan, giving the appeal court judgment, said it was clear the jury verdict, so far as it concerned the drug-dealing allegation, cannot be allowed stand.

“Viewed objectively, the evidence overwhelmingly pointed to the conclusion Mr McDonagh was, indeed, a drug dealer associated with the drugs seizure in Tubbercurry,” Mr Justice Hogan said.

If the allegation was correct, he said, the newspaper had a constitutional right to publish and that right cannot be compromised by a jury verdict “which was, in essence, perverse”.

The evidence in relation to the allegation of loan-sharking was much more limited, the judge said.

It might have been open to a properly instructed jury to find for Mr McDonagh on that allegation and a new trial was ordered, Mr Justice Hogan said.

Mr McDonagh, aged 51, of Cranmore Drive, Sligo, sued the Sunday World over an article published on September 5, 1999, describing him as a “Traveller drug king”.

It was published midway through his seven-day detention for questioning in connection with the Tubbercurry seizure.

Mr McDonagh, who has always denied involvement in drugs, was ultimately released without charge.

The newspaper denied libel and pleaded justification and that the contents of the article were true.

The jury found that the newspaper had failed to prove Mr McDonagh was a drug dealer and a loan shark, but had proven that he was a tax evader and a criminal.

Earlier in his judgment, Mr Justice Hogan said this case presented once again the question of the appropriate balance to be struck between two fundamental values — the right to one’s good name and freedom of expression.

It was clear, he said, that there was effectively unchallenged evidence to the effect that Mr McDonagh was aware a drugs consignment was being planned, that the drugs had been bought in Spain by the man he met in London, that the operation was financed by Mr McDonagh’s brother Michael, and that the drugs were taken to the UK via Amsterdam.

The judge said these matters were among the pleas in justification for the article, as well as the fact that Mr McDonagh had IR£410,000 in a bank account at the time when he was claiming social welfare and had no other visible means of support.

The evidence offered by Mr McDonagh was that he had never been charged or convicted in relation to Tubbercurry or any other drugs offence and that he denied making statements while in garda custody.

It was argued the large sum of money in his bank account could be explained by wholescale benefit fraud in the UK and by activities such as being engaged in the waste removal business.

Reviewing the evidence as a whole, Mr Justice Hogan said he found himself coerced to the conclusion that it showed overwhelmingly Mr McDonagh was indeed a drug dealer and the jury’s conclusion to the contrary was perverse and could not be allowed stand.

Costs and other matters will be dealt with when the case returns to the appeals court next month.