Supreme Court upholds €75,000 award to businessman mistakenly identified as a tax defaulter
The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by Iconic Newspapers over an article in one of its publications in which a businessman was incorrectly named as a tax defaulter.
In May 2023, a High Court jury awarded William Bird €75,000 after it found the article in the Limerick Leader, published in June 2016, was defamatory.
Mr Bird, a director of William Bird Limerick Ltd and operator of the Stella Bingo Hall in Shannon Street, Limerick, sued Iconic Newspapers Ltd over an article which outlined tax settlements from a list published by the Revenue Commissioners.
It stated: "Funfair/amusement activity operator William Bird, of Henry Street, reached three separate settlements for under-declaration of corporation tax and VAT, under-declaration of PAYE/PRSI and VAT, and under-declaration of corporation tax, in relation to three companies under his name. In total, the monies paid to Revenue in his case amounted to €183,595."
However, Mr. Bird, from Castleconnell, had made no such settlements with Revenue. The settlements detailed in the Limerick Leader article had been made by three companies: William Bird (Rollercoaster) Limited, William Bird (Sales) Limited and William Bird Tramore Limited. Mr. Bird had nothing whatsoever to do with any of these three companies.
As part of its defence in the High Court, Iconic argued that the publication was covered by qualified privilege, which provides certain protections for a publisher, including that those reading it had a duty or interest in receiving it and that the publisher reasonably believed the receivers of that information had such a duty.
This issue was dealt with by the judge alone during the High Court hearing, and he rejected Iconic's claim that the article enjoyed qualified privilege.
The jury was only asked to decide whether the words complained or referred to Mr Bird. It found it did and awarded him €75,000.
Iconic appealed and the Court of Appeal (CoA) last year rejected its appeal.
Iconic got a further appeal to the Supreme Court, which was opposed by Mr Bird. Iconic also appealed a CoA decision to overturn a High Court ruling that Mr Bird was only entitled to lower Circuit Court costs as his €75,000 award was €1 below the threshold for High Court cases.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court dismissed both appeals.
Mr Justice Maurice Collins, on behalf of the five-judge court, said, in his view, no common law qualified privilege defence would be available to Iconic here or a defence under section 18.1 of the Defamation Act 2009 relating to qualified privilege.
The focus of Iconic's argument was section 18.2 of the Act, which provides a defence to a defamation action for the defendant to prove a statement was published to those who had a duty to receive or had an interest in receiving the information.
It is also a defence if the defendant believed on reasonable grounds it has such a duty or the defendant had a corresponding duty to communicate the information and a corresponding duty to do so.
The judge said the issue in this appeal was whether section 18(2) of the 2009 Act can and should be interpreted so as to provide a parallel defence for public interest reporting, encompassing publications such as that at issue here and shorn of certain limitations in other parts of the Act dealing with fair and accurate reporting (Section 18.3) and fair and reasonable publication (section 26).
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Had Iconic reported fairly and accurately on the tax defaulters list - something which could not be said to have been either complex or burdensome - its report would have been protected under section 18(3) of the Act, he said.
Regrettably, the newspaper article was materially inaccurate insofar as it suggested that Mr Bird was associated with and/or responsible for significant tax defaults by three companies with which he had in fact no connection, he said.
The jury took the view that that amounted to a significant defamation of him, as it was clearly entitled to do, he said. The qualified privilege appeal must therefore be dismissed, he said.
The judge said the CoA did not err in its decision to award Mr Bird High Court costs.
