JUDGE Raymond Groarke yesterday awarded £750 damages in the Circuit Civil Court to a man who claimed up to £30,000 for defamation against the Sunday World and its crime correspondent, Paul Williams.
The newspaper was held to have defamed Mr Ian Dutton (33), of Greenfort Lawns, Clondalkin, Dublin, in an article about an alleged fraudulent claim against Dublin Corporation which was later upheld in the High Court.
Mr George Birmingham, counsel for Mr Dutton, said his uncle, Joe Dutton, had sued the Corporation and his claim had been dismissed by Judge Cyril Kelly in the Circuit Civil Court on the grounds he did not believe him. Mr Birmingham said the article about Joe Dutton, under a heading "Trickster exposed in £30,000 con", mentioned Ian Dutton as having earlier obtained an £8,500 award against the Corporation. What it had not stated was that the award, for a fall, had been made after a full hearing before Judge Frank Martin, who had commended Ian Dutton for his honesty.
Mr Birmingham said the article was published alongside one about an "accident prone" Corbally family and carried a sub heading quoting the Dublin Corporation spokesman, Mr Noel Carroll, as having said: "We're no longer a soft touch."
Judge Groarke said he had been pressed by Mr Hugh Mohan, counsel for the Sunday World, effectively to conclude that Ian Dutton who had admitted in evidence to a life of petty crime, was a person of no reputation capable of sustaining injury or hurt and was therefore not entitled to compensation.
He said that although Dutton admitted to a criminal record before 1992 and had sought to mislead the court regarding his experience with the Garda since then, he could not hold he had no reputation.
Judge Groarke said the first part of the article was an account of what had happened during an unsuccessful claims trial before Judge Cyril Kelly and as such carried an absolute privilege. But he held this privilege was not carried forward in so far as the second part related to a comment by Mr, Carroll that the Corporation was no longer a soft touch for people looking for easy compensation money and that it was fighting back.
He said that in an effort to deal with fraudulent claims the Corporation had set up an investigative branch which examined and investigated, not the merits of the claims, but the backgrounds of the people making them. It seemed to him that the Corporation determined that so far as Mr Joe, Dutton's claim was concerned they had initiated and established a considerable victory.
The judge said that when approached by Mr Williams, who had been alerted by reports of the case in a daily newspaper, the Corporation had, somewhat cynically, failed to point out that Ian Dutton had not only been successful in his claim but had been commended by Judge Martin as to his honesty.