09012024 - Flipbook - Page 5
and vexatious’
5
NEWS
TUESDAY JANUARY 9 2024
Sinn Féin
shows little
sign of
dropping libel
actions despite
setbacks
Harry Magee.
Ms McDonald’s husband, Martin
Lanigan, is suing Shane Ross, the Re-
ANALYSIS
president.
POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
j.manley@irishnews.com
T
In
HE dismissal of Gerry Kelly’s
case
is
the
third
time
in recent months that court
action taken by a senior Sinn
Féin gure has concluded with what
the litigant would likely regard as an
unfavourable
outcome.
But
will
it
quell the party’s appetite for launching libel actions?
out
The High Court in Belfast struck
the
North
Belfast
MLA’s
case
against journalist Malachi O’Doherty,
describing
it
as
“scandalous,
lous and vexatious”.
frivo-
In November, rst minister desig-
nate Michelle O’Neill was criticised
for
bringing
Court
a
judge
former
transport
minister
turned author, who wrote an unauthorised biography of the Sinn Féin
JOHN MANLEY
libel
public’s
case
said
which
involved
a
High
insults
the
north,
North
Belfast
“
The volume of
litigation from senior
Sinn Féin figures has
been criticised by
political opponents
and by groups
promoting media
freedom
“heard in school playgrounds”.
“This is undesirable and not in
the public interest,” Master Evan Bell
A judge has thrown out a libel case brought by Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly. Below, Malachi O’Doherty
said in his summing up, terming the
dispute with former DUP councillor
John Carson as a “minor case”.
Later the same month, the High
Court
in
Dublin
dismissed
a
sepa-
rate case taken by Ms O’Neill’s former
special
adviser
at
Stormont’s
Department of Agriculture.
MP
Drumcondra, Dublin, claimed he was
claims.
Liam Lappin, with an address in
defamed in an article published by
John
Finucane
is
suing
DUP
councillor Marc Collins over Twitter
The
volume
by groups promoting media freedom.
Mr
Justice
jected
Féin
the
Charles
Meenan
schoolteacher
constituency
and
organiser’s
re-
Sinn
claim
that the article, either in its ordinary
meaning or by innuendo, meant he
was a murderer and an IRA member.
It could be argued that the neg-
ative
publicity
arising
from
such
public slap downs from the judiciary
would prompt Sinn Féin to reconsider
launching
libel
actions,
though
there’s little evidence yet of that being the case.
In the south, party leader Mary
Lou
McDonald
caster
Dublin
RTÉ
Bay
for
is
suing
the
defamation,
South
TD
broadwhile
Chris
An-
drews is suing the Irish Times and
the
paper’s
political
correspondent
gures
has
from
of him and 13 others at a Sinn Féin
Christmas party.
Féin
litigation
senior
2020, which contained a photograph
Sinn
of
the Sunday Life newspaper in March
been
criticised by political opponents and
Taoiseach
Leo
Varadkar
said
last year that such actions were “designed
while
a
to
make
coalition
organisations
journalists
of
said
press
the
afraid”,
freedom
party’s
ac-
tions had the hallmark of strategic
lawsuits against public participation,
or Slapps, a form of legal harassment
intended
to
intimidate
public watchdogs.
and
silence
The Sinn Féin leader has strongly
rejected
accusations
that
her
par-
ty is trying to silence the media by
mounting legal actions.
In
the
wake
of
Mr
Andrews
launching his case against the Irish
Times, Ms McDonald said that people “have the right to use the mechanisms available to them to vindicate
their name”.