Further to my earlier post about last week’s Current Legal Problem lecture on
Spies Like Us? Frank Snepp and George Blake: Freedom of Speech and Restitutionary Remedies
the paper is now available here, via Scrib’d. It’s a good remedy for insomnia. All comments gratefully received.…
It all began innocently enough: just before Christmas, Sunday Times journalist John Burns wrote a piece lamenting the shortcomings of blogging in Ireland. Leading bloggers naturally begged to differ. A month later, the spat was picked up by Trevor Butterworth writing on Forbes.com, who noted that “it’s hard to think of a free country more suited to blogging than Ireland”. By the same token, it’s at least as hard to think of a country more given to litigation; and the point was illustrated by a story retailed almost en passant in Butterworth’s piece:
As one journalist told me, Ireland’s media is currently abuzz over a “confidential” legal settlement against a blogger, who allegedly had to pay almost $140,000 in damages for a libelous post, seen by few, swiftly purged from the site, and readily apologized for.
This was intriguing. By the end of the week, John Burns in the Sunday Times had the full story:
…A blogger has agreed a €100,000 settlement after libelling Niall Ó Donnchú, a senior civil servant, and his girlfriend Laura Barnes. It is the first time in Ireland that defamatory material on a blog has resulted in a pay-out. … In December 1, 2006, a blogger who styles himself as Ardmayle posted a comment about the couple … Following a legal complaint, he took down the blog and in February 2007 he posted an apology which had been supplied by Ó Donnchú’s and Barnes’ lawyer … However, the pair subsequently issued separate proceedings.
Over sixty years ago, the Faculty of Laws at University College London established the Current Legal Problems lecture series and accompanying annual volume as a major reference point for a broad range of legal scholarship opinion, theory, methodology, and subject matter, with an emphasis upon contemporary developments of law. The lectures are held at the Faculty of Law, Bentham House, Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1 from 6-7pm; they are open to the public and free of charge. This week‘s current legal issue is:
Spies Like Us? Frank Snepp and George Blake: Freedom of Speech and Restitutionary Remedies
“Espionage is a serious business” sang a moderately famous Irish pop singer of the 1980s. And so it is. It can be even more of a business when former spies seek to publish their memoirs, and things can get very serious indeed if they fail to seek the clearance of their former spymasters in advance. The decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in Snepp v US 444 US 507 (1980) and of the House of Lords in AG v Blake [2001] 1 AC 268; [2000] UKHL 45 (27 July 2000) make a fascinating pair of cases in which former spies (unsuccessfully) argued that a restitutionary remedy against uncleared publication of their memoirs infringed their speech rights.…
Last week, Peter Sutherland gave a speech about the Irish university sector. It generated quite a lot of controversy at the time, and an edited version appears in yesterday’s Sunday Times. Unfortunately, the speech has rather overshadowed the occasion; this is a pity, since it was the launch of the Undergraduate Awards of Ireland and Northern Ireland 2010. This is the second year of the initiative; the IUA website has information about the last year’s winners as well as about this year’s competition. Submissions from undergraduates in the form of essays or projects can be entered into one of 26 categories. The first round is especially for final and penultimate year students together with part-time students who have secured at least 1/3 of credits necessary to graduate, and their deadline is 12 March 2010, so it’s approaching rather quickly. According to the criteria on the website, “your submission should represent the highest standard of intellectual and scholarly achievement in your chosen field … [and it] should embody a piece of independent and original work together with a clear identification of its aims and objectives”. So, no pressure then.…
In today’s Irish Times (with added links):
…Defamation Act a welcome but imperfect reform for libel cases
The Defamation Act [2009] which came into effect this month, is a significant improvement on the old law, but serious problems remain … [It] modernises the law. It provides statutory support for the Press Council and it makes it easier both to take and to defend libel cases. For these reasons, as the Act came into effect earlier this month, Andrew O’Rorke quite rightly afforded it a very warm welcome … However, it ducks some important reforms and bungles others, while some of its most significant provisions raise constitutional problems.
For example, it fails to account for internet service providers (ISPs) or to rebalance the burden of proof from the defendant to the plaintiff. The centrepiece defence of fair and reasonable publication is unworkably narrow. Those issues, along with the ease with which companies can take defamation actions under the Act, might even prove unconstitutional. …
The Defamation Act 2009 is a hugely significant piece of legislation, which has gone a very long way towards restoring fairness and stability to a notorious area of the law. However, in some important respects, the Act raises as many questions as it has answered and its deserved welcome must therefore be a qualified one.
As the Supreme Court of Canada adopts a species of the responsible journalism defence to libel claims, the case that embodied the best opportunity that Irish law has had so far to do the same has come to an end. In Hunter v Duckworth, Ó Caoimh J in the High Court ([2003] IEHC 81 (31 July 2003)) seemed to approve of the defence (at least in the view of Charlton J in a later case), but the Supreme Court ducked the question and returned the case to the High Court. However, the case has now been settled. According to the Irish Times:
…English barrister apologises to two Birmingham Six
An English barrister has apologised before the High Court to two members of the wrongly jailed Birmingham Six who had sued him for defamation over a pamphlet written by him which contained material meaning, the men alleged, they were “mass murderers”.
Sir Louis Blom–Cooper QC in an apology read by his counsel Douglas Clarke yesterday, said he “sincerely regrets certain unintended inferences” which have been drawn from the publication of the pamphlet in 1997.
He said “an unqualified apology for any suggestion of the guilt” of Hugh Callaghan and Gerry Hunter was “overdue”.
Today’s Irish Times carries two interesting interlinked reports. The first is about yesterday’s Press Council seminar in Cork, the second is about TV3’s exposure of Brian Lenihan’s illness, which – unsurprisingly – was one of the issues discussed at the seminar.
First, yesterday’s seminar in Cork:
Media’s role vital to liberty, says Dunne
Freedom would mean less without a free media, entrepreneur Ben Dunne told a seminar organised in Cork yesterday by the Press Council of Ireland. … He condemned the broadcast of the Brian Lenihan story on TV3 on December 26th, saying that it “crossed a line it did not need to cross”. However, he added that TV3 was not the only offender in relation to breaches of privacy.
Another speaker, Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes, told the seminar that the phenomenal development of the internet posed challenges to traditional ideas of privacy and data protection. …
Tightening privacy laws is a recipe for “non-accountability, secrecy and duplicity”, the seminar was told by Paul Drury, managing editor of the Irish Daily Mail, who added that he was wary of any proposal to legislate for heightened privacy.
Paul Drury will be very well aware that TV3’s revelations of Brian Lenihan’s illness could make privacy legislation more likely, even though the Minister himself seems remarkably phlegmatic about it:
…Lenihan says he was rushed into telling children about cancer
Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan has told a local newspaper [the Community Voice newspaper in Blanchardstown] he was rushed into telling his children about his cancer diagnosis on St Stephen’s Day because TV3 had decided to run the story.
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