Defamation award for Limerick businessman

A LIMERICK businessman has been awarded €75,000 by a High Court jury following the publication of a defamatory article in the Limerick Leader, which the plaintiff claimed said he was a tax defaulter.

William Bird, aged 82 and a director of William Bird Limerick Limited, operators of the Stella Bingo Hall on Shannon Street, Limerick, sued the publishers of this newspaper, Iconic Newspapers Limited, over an article published in June 2016 listing tax settlements involving Limerick businesses from a list published by the Revenue Commissioners.

The five day hearing in the High Court concluded last week with the jury coming to their verdict after almost four hours of deliberation.

Mr Bird was also awarded his costs, but they are limited to Circuit Court scale as the award did not meet the required figure to secure High Court costs.

Mr Justice Alex Owens thanked the jury for their time, and they were discharged from jury service for the next ten years.

The article, which was published on page two of the June 11, 2016 edition mistakenly stated: “Funfair/amusement activity operator William Bird, of Henry Street, reached three separate settlements for under-declaration of corporation tax and VAT, under-declaration of PAYE/PRSI and VAT, and under-declaration of corporation tax, in relation to three companies under his name.”

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The court heard the Bird family was well known as a travelling funfair and amusement business and has run the Funderland Fair in the RDS over the years.

Mr Bird was one of a number of brothers who worked with their father, the late William Bird in the business and, in 1994, Mr Bird transferred most of his interest in the Bird companies and since that time was involved in only one, William Bird Limerick Ltd, which operated the Stella Bingo Hall, and he had no role in any of the companies which had made a settlement with Revenue.

The jury agreed that those words could be reasonably understood by readers of the article as referring to Mr Bird, of Castleconnell, Limerick and they also found those words meant Mr Bird was responsible for under-declarations of liability to pay taxes and Pay Related Social Insurance (PRSI).

Mr Bird claimed the article falsely meant he was a tax defaulter, that he had submitted false or fraudulent tax returns and was of low moral character.

He claimed that people in his village of Castleconnell, Co Limerick, had avoided him following publication of the article.

Patrick Bird, a witness and son of the plaintiff, said his father stopped attending the Bingo hall, which he regularly did prior to the article. A witness for the plaintiff, Shannon Street businessman Brian Tuohy, told the court that when he read the article, he understood it to refer to William Bird, the plaintiff who also has a business address on Shannon Street.

Iconic denied defamation and argued that the article did not identify or concern Mr Bird. The journalist who wrote the article, Anne Sheridan, said she had interpreted the Revenue list numerous times and had written many stories on the subject.

She said that when she read the list from a print out, she mistakenly read that it referred to an individual instead of to companies.

She did not know of the plaintiff William Bird, and described her interpretation as an honest mistake. The newspaper had also offered a Clarification/Apology to the plaintiff through his solicitors McMahon O’Brien Tynan of Henry Street, Limerick.