A LIBEL action taken by a businessman, who also worked as a model, against Business and Finance magazine has been settled, the High Court was told yesterday. The magazine published a photograph of him accompanying an article on money-laundering.
Mr Brendan Geraghty (55), Sandymount Avenue, Dublin, had taken the case against Belenos Publications Ltd, which publishes Business and Finance, Mr Mark Dunne, who wrote the article, and Brookfield Printing Company Ltd.
Yesterday, on the second day of the action, Mr Garrett Cooney SC, for Mr Geraghty, said the parties had settled their differences through negotiations. The defendants had undertaken to publish a clarification within the next week or so with the photograph of Mr Geraghty. He asked that the action be struck out.
The President of the High Court, Mr Justice Costello, made the order and discharged the jury.
Mr Geraghty had claimed the photograph, which he had posed for in 1985 in relation to another article in the magazine, was used without his permission nine years later with an article relating to money-laundering. He contended that the photograph was used in such a way as to suggest he was engaged in the criminal activities referred to in the article.
Business and Finance denied the article referred to Mr Geraghty. It admitted the photograph was of him but pleaded that the photograph referred to a fictional person, and that he acted as a model. It denied the article bore the meaning that Mr Geraghty was involved in the criminal activities referred to in the article.