OPENING the case for Mr Reynolds, Lord Gareth Williams QC told the jury that the article in the Sunday Times had "damaged his reputation, attacked his good name, upset the peace and tranquillity of his mind and wounded his heart".
Lord Williams claimed the article, printed in the English, Scottish and Welsh editions on November 20th, 1994, had accused Mr Reynolds of lying to the Dail and misleading his colleagues in the Coalition.
"This is a very important case for Mr Reynolds," he said. "He is a man who has got the nerve to come to court to complain about the Sunday Times.
Lord Williams apologised to the jury for giving such a detailed version of the history of the downfall of Mr Reynolds's government. "Forgive me for going into detail but it all slots into a jigsaw that the Sunday Times got 100 per cent wrong, he said.
After outlining the history, Lord Williams told the jury the former Taoiseach did not lie to the Dail over the existence of the Duggan file.
"The Sunday Times said Albert Reynolds lied to the Dail. Members of the jury, he did not. That there was confusion, he does not dispute; that there was inefficiency, he will not deny. He will deny and deny again that he told lies to the Dail. What you will find of great interest, indeed, is that the Sunday Times published one article in England, Scotland and Wales and one in the Republic.
"The one in Ireland said, by and large, that it was all a mess. Over here they said he was a fibber, over there they said it was a muddle. Someone, somewhere, is going to have to answer for that", he said.
Before reading the offending article to the jury, Lord Williams told them: "Bear in mind what the Sunday Times published in Ireland is not at all similar to what was published over here. It would be like you reading in the Alan or whatever that they positively said the world was round.
"And, when you fly to Dublin to watch a rugby match, you see that they say the world is positively flat. The one thing we and the Sunday Times are agreed on is that they call him a liar."
Reading the article out loud, Lord Williams told the jury: "It is headlined `Goodbye gombeen man' - this is a term of insult in the Republic. Why a fib too far proved fatal for the political career of Ireland's peacemaker land Mr Fixit.
"If you call someone a fibber - let's not mess about - what he is being called is a liar. The Sunday Times called Mr Reynolds a liar. They said he lied to the Dail on November 15th, 1994, and misled his cabinet colleagues. If you call someone a liar, you have to prove it. And that is what this case is going to turn on," he said.
Lord Williams then read the first few paragraphs of the article to the jury: "In another age, Albert Reynolds could have been the classic gombeen man of Irish lore; the local fixer with a finger in every pie.
"The fact that he rose from backwoods dance hall manager to Taoiseach was a tribute both to his own brilliant cunning and to the nature of Irish society. His slow fall last week, his fingernails screeching down the political cliff face, has been welcomed with a whoop of delight by many Irish people who want to drag their country out of the past.
"Are they right to celebrate? And what actually happened to transform the man hailed as the peacemaker of Northern Ireland into a humiliated figure pleading for his political life in parliament?
"The simple answer is that the gombeen man went a bit too far." Reynolds repeatedly did not tell the full facts about the controversial elevation of one of his political cronies to the presidency of the High Court. The full story of his eclipse, however, has sullied Ireland's reputation, damaged its church, destroyed its peacemaker and provided its unionist neighbours with a fistful of new reasons to avoid contamination by the South," he read.
Pausing, Lord Williams told the jury: "I choose not to comment on that paragraph because I don't think it needs it."
Lord Williams claimed the article also suggested Mr Reynolds' was incompetent. "When they wrote that, do you think they knew that Mr Reynolds never got the appropriate information until 9 p.m., after he left the Dail and had his bite to eat? Did they ask? Not a single man, woman, or donkey from the Sunday Times asked Mr Reynolds. Is that how we behave in this country, not to even ask? How would you like it if they did it to you?" he asked the jury.
Quoting again from the Sunday Times article, Lord Williams read;
"`The Irish Times, Ireland's most venerable newspaper, drew up a thunderous political obituary to the Taoiseach. Reynolds, it said, was a political bully behind a smiling face who showed a cynical indifference to those principles of public office which did not suit his purposes and whose actions, once in power, belied so much of the high principle he enunciated in his campaign to get there. Public life will not be greatly poorer for his departure from office'."