Jury Awards In Defamation Cases

Joe O'Malley represented Donal Kinsella in his recent libel case in which a Dublin jury awarded a record level of compensation in the amount of €10,000,000.

The highest jury and defamation award in the history of the State was handed down on the evening of Wednesday 17 November 2010 when eleven remaining members of an originally empanelled twelve member jury awarded Donal Kinsella €9,000,000 in compensatory damages and €1,000,000 million in aggravated damages after just over three hours of deliberations. While we may be familiar with multi million payouts from American juries this is the first time we have witnessed our peers lay down an award of damages stretching into eight digits.

While the purpose of this article is to focus upon on jury awards in defamation trials, it is worth noting that all High Court defamation, false imprisonment and assault claims fall within the ambit of the jury list which consists of a two or three week long jury session in each law term. This list has been marked by notoriously long queues and generally few trials per session are accommodated. Most Plaintiffs in High Court defamation actions opt for trial by judge and jury although it is permissible for a Plaintiff to opt for a trial by judge alone.

The first striking feature about jury trials from a solicitor's perspective is that it is the solicitor who is charged with jury selection at the outset of the trial. A list of jurors is published by the jury office on the Monday before the call-over of the jury list of trials and that list provides the name and address and in some instances the occupation of each potential juror. The empanelment of jurors commences with a presiding judge, currently Mr. Justice De Valera reading a short précis of the particular case and then having his registrar randomly select jurors from a crowded courtroom. It is the solicitor's function to use wisely his or her seven challenges "without cause" in order to facilitate the empanelment of a jury that is considered most favourable to his or her particular case. While each party has an unlimited amount of challenges to proposed jurors "with cause", this power is rarely exercised. Unlike the American system, an examination of jurors is not permitted thereby removing the art and science to jury selection that is seen to prevail in America. It is often said that jurors are not particularly representative of the community as a whole given that judges tend to excuse jurors who cite work...