Denis O’Brien challenge to defamation damages award struck out

Denis O’Brien’s appeal to a High Court jury’s award of €823,500 to two lawyers the businessman defamed in a 2016 press release has been struck out. Last November, the jury found O’Brien and his long-time spokesman James Morrissey had defamed Darragh Mackin and Gavin Booth in the statement that implied the Belfast-based solicitors acted for the IRA. O’Brien made the statement in response to a report on media ownership in Ireland. The report, which was co-authored by Mackin and Booth, contained the words, “Sinn Féin/IRA certainly got the report they paid for”.O’Brien and Morrissey were ordered to pay the lawyers €411,750 each to compensate the damage done to the solicitors’ reputations arising from the defamation. The jury’s award of damages fell within the category for “very serious” instan