{"id":554869,"date":"2026-07-17T19:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T19:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/554869\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T19:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T19:11:10","slug":"denis-obriens-appeal-over-e823500-defamation-award-struck-out-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/554869\/","title":{"rendered":"Denis O\u2019Brien\u2019s appeal over \u20ac823,500 defamation award struck out \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/denis-obrien\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/denis-obrien\/\">Denis O\u2019Brien\u2019s<\/a> appeal to a High Court jury\u2019s award of \u20ac823,500 to two lawyers the businessman defamed in a 2016 press release has been struck out. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Last November, the jury found O\u2019Brien and his long-time spokesman James Morrissey had defamed Darragh Mackin and Gavin Booth in the statement that implied the Belfast-based solicitors acted for the IRA. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">O\u2019Brien made the statement in response to a report on media ownership in Ireland, which was co-authored by Mackin and Booth. The statement contained the words: \u201cSinn F\u00e9in\/IRA certainly got the report they paid for\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">O\u2019Brien and Morrissey were ordered to pay the lawyers \u20ac411,750 each to compensate the damage done to the solicitors\u2019 reputations arising from the defamation. The jury\u2019s award of damages fell within the category for \u201cvery serious\u201d instances of defamation, as outlined in Supreme Court guidelines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">After the jury decision, lawyers for O\u2019Brien and Morrissey lodged a challenge to the award at the Court of Appeal. They submitted the award shouldn\u2019t have been in the range for \u201cvery serious\u201d defamation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/business\/2025\/11\/21\/jury-begins-deliberations-in-defamation-case-against-denis-obrien\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Denis O\u2019Brien and spokesman must pay \u20ac411,750 to each of two solicitors they defamed, jury findsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">O\u2019Brien and Morrissey\u2019s challenge to the award was listed before the Court of Appeal on Friday, in advance of the hearing of the appeal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mark Harty, appearing for Mackin and Booth, told court president Judge Caroline Costello the appeal could be struck out. He said there was no order sought in respect of the legal costs of the appeal. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Joe Holt, barrister for O\u2019Brien and Morrissey, said his side was consenting to the order.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The judge made the order as sought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denis O\u2019Brien\u2019s appeal to a High Court jury\u2019s award of \u20ac823,500 to two lawyers the businessman defamed in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,7517,73,61,60,234666],"class_list":["post-554869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-denis-obrien","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-james-morrissey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}