video I'm gonna take a look at one of the topics that's people seem to have a
particular interest in it's one of two topics defamation the other one as a
matter of interest is adverse possession various people have a long lasting
enduring relationship with land and the whole question of adverse possession is
something that exercises them greatly we're gonna get a lot of queries about adverse
possession but this particular video that I'm doing now is about defamation
and it's something that comes up from time to time people contact me regularly
whether they were defamed online for example whether they were defamed perhaps in
an internal employment situation whether they were defamed by reason of maybe an
accusation or an allegation made against them in the employment context so I
came across a video or a case recently where the decision was handed down in
December of 2019 it's an interesting decision it involved
a young man a graduate of Maynooth University who boarded along with his
brother the LUAS tram in Dublin not long afterwards or at some point during
the journey two security guards got on and they asked the plaintiff in this
case to produce tickets the plaintiff did produce two tickets and had tickets
for himself and his brother but accused the security guard of racially profiling or
slightly racially profiling the security guard took exception to this and said
that he didn't like his attitude and there was a bit of an exchange a bit of
an argument as it were or at least an exchange of views and one of the
security guards asked him to get off the LUAS the other security guard however
very quickly countermanded this direction or this request this is
significant in the overall context of the case the young men then were allowed
to continue their journey they had valid tickets and when they got to the
end of the journey they went to make a complaint in the local LUAS office
which was as you might expect closed between the jig's and the reels
however defamation proceedings were brought and the case first went to the
Circuit Court and then it went to the High Court on appeal the judges in the
High Court and had to decide whether the young man was defamed or not the
plaintiff was defamed or not by the LUAS security guards and had to decide
then if he was defamed what would be the damages be compensatory
damages the judge accepted that the young man and his brother behaved
perfectly well on the train on the LUAS and there was no reason for him to
be asked to get off the court held that the security guards were perfectly
entitled to ask for the production of the tickets this was not defamatory and
the security guards would have had the benefit of qualified privilege in asking
for in asking for the production of the tickets but once the tickets were
produced at that stage the question of qualified privilege in terms of a
defense to the defamation went out the window
and that again is significant so there was an argument between security guards
and the plaintiff and his brother the plaintiff and his brother according to
the court behaved perfectly well and there was absolutely no reason why they would
be asked to leave the LUAS in the heel of the hunt the court decided that while
the young men behaved correctly and there was a conflict of evidence and so
on the fact that the young man was subjected to being asked to get off the
LUAS and there was an exchange of views that
the other people in the carriage would draw one of two conclusions either one
that the young man didn't have a ticket or two he behaved in a way which would
justify his being asked to leave the LUAS this was not the case because the
young man did have a ticket so the High Court held that that act of
itself was defamatory insofar as there was absolutely no reason to ask him to get
off the LUAS he behaved perfectly fine was no issue there and he had a contract
a valid contract by reason of having purchased the ticket so the fact that he
was asked to get off was of itself defamatory however the fact that the
other security guard countermanded this request very quickly meant that the
defamation was fleeting or moment momentary and on that basis even though
the High Court held that the evidence of the young men was perfectly acceptable
they had behaved correctly and they had valid tickets and they were defamed the
High Court held that he could only or the court could only justify nominal
damages because of the very short nature of the defamation the fact that the
request to ask the young man to get off the LUAS was quickly countermanded by the
other security guard meant that any damage was very very short-lived
and therefore the High Court awarderd 500 euros in damages to the plaintiff
clearly if you go to the High Court with a defamation action and you're awarded
five hundred euros in damages you are going to be in big difficulty in terms
of your legal costs and so forth however in this case I think that court awarded
the costs of bringing the proceedings to the plaintiff
but obviously 500 euros by way of an award for defamation in the High Court
would have to be considered to be disappointing this case is evidence as
well of what appears to be a trend in the High Court in the last year or two
where they seem to be arriving at more realistic more reasonable awards for
defamation I've written a blog post about this
particular case it's involving as I say a Maynooth university graduate and LUAS
it's on my website business and legal dot ie the full decision is there there's
it's worth reading as I say the two things that I discovered was a the
question of qualified privilege what is qualified privilege and the question of
and the other thing is in arriving at whether somebody has been defamed or not
the High Court is obliged to look at all of the circumstances all of the exchange
and it referred to a previous case involving Griffin and the Sunday
newspapers or versus Sunday newspapers in 2011 where it was held that
plaintiff cannot select an isolated passage of sentence in an article and
complain of that alone if other parts of the article throw a different light on
that passage the real test is whether the result of the whole is calculated to
injure the plaintiffs character so that's basically saying that he can't pick an
isolated sentence or word or phrase or whatever and hang your opinion colours
to the mast on that the whole transaction must be looked at and in
this case the whole exchange between the security guards and the young man the
plaintiff and his brother was looked at and the court identified the particular
instance of defamation where the young man was asked to get off the LUAS whether that
was soon countermanded by the other security guard and that's what the court
is referring to there in terms of looking at the whole exchange and
not relying on just one isolated incident and being able to pin your
colors or hang your hat entirely on that one phrase or one sentence one
action one interaction in an interaction that may have occurred over a short
period of time hope you find this video useful if you do you might give it a
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