The €100,000 in damages awarded to lifelong republican leader Gerry Adams is in the “medium range” for awards for defamation.
Very moderate defamations, Mr Justice Alexander Owens had told the jury, should get awards of up to €50,000, medium range defamations €50,000 to €125,000, serious defamations €125,000 to €200,000, and “truly exceptional” defamations, €200,000 to €300,000.
Given that Adams was alleged to have given the go-ahead for a man to be murdered, the award could be seen as a low one, two experienced lawyers, speaking off the record, observed in the wake of the verdict.
Nevertheless, it is an undeniable win for Adams and republicanism generally. “Tháinig ár lá” [our day has come], muttered one legal figure as the court was emptying, referring to the republican catchphrase ‘Tiocfaidh ár lá’.
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The jury found the BBC Northern Ireland programme, Spotlight, defamed Adams in 2016 when it quoted an anonymous man saying Adams would have given the go-ahead for the 2006 murder of self-confessed republican informer, Denis Donaldson, and that Donaldson was killed by the IRA. The programme included a statement from Adams refuting the allegation.
In the witness box Adams pointed out that the IRA issued a statement in 2005 saying it had “formally ordered an end to the armed campaign” and that all members were told to restrict themselves to “exclusively peaceful” activities.
The Spotlight allegation, he said, meant that the IRA statement was all “a cod”. As someone who had worked hard to bring about peace, this had damaged his name in the “broad republican family”.
The jury found that the BBC was not entitled to a defence that the defamatory material was published in good faith or constituted fair and reasonable journalism.
The cost of the lengthy High Court trial, to be borne by the BBC, is likely to exceed €3 million.
The decision by Adams to take proceedings before a jury in Dublin rather than in Belfast was one of the many interesting features of the case. (It was open to Adams to take proceedings on both sides of the border). It is too late now for proceedings in Northern Ireland.
The programme had just 15,800 views on terrestrial TV in this jurisdiction, which may be a factor in the size of the award. The jury was told only to compensate damage to reputation in this jurisdiction.
Adams, in the witness box, accepted that politicians, journalists and others have repeatedly alleged he was a senior figure in the IRA and associated with overseeing many of its most heinous crimes.
His evidence was that he joined Sinn Féin as a young man and not the IRA. “It wasn’t a path I took, that was a decision by me, not to join the IRA, to join Sinn Féin,” he told the jury.
The BBC were arguing he had “no reputation, that my reputation is useless,” he complained. Spotlight believed it could “say whatever they like about me, and I can have no redress”.
The lawyers who spoke to The Irish Times were critical of the Spotlight programme.
Just because a person had a sullied reputation should not mean anything can be said about them. Under US law wild allegations can be published there about public figures without fear of being sued if the person’s reaction to the allegation is also published, one observed. “That’s unfair.”
Mr Justice Owens, who made many observations during the five-week trial, at one stage remarked that reputations change and instanced that Ireland had a civil war after which the reputations of the participants changed over time. Adams, presumably, would have welcomed the analogy.
