A FORMER executive of Independent News and Media (INM) has sued the company for damages, alleging the decision to dismiss him from his €300,000 a year position was unlawful.

Karl Brophy claims the company’s largest shareholder, Denis O’Brien, was behind his ousting.

After being offered his INM position by former chief executive Gavin O’Reilly and in a context where he had previously written articles “not particularly flattering” of Mr O’Brien, he told the court he sought assurances from Mr O’Reilly that if Mr O’Brien took over the company, he would “not be the first up against the wall with a blindfold on, which is what actually happened”.

He claims he was told last April his continued employment would be “problematic” because of recent coverage in Independent titles concerning Mr O’Brien.

Mr Brophy had said he had no role in this coverage but he was never given an opportunity to deal with it, his counsel said.

Mr Brophy, appointed director of corporate affairs and content development in 2010 by Gavin O’Reilly, also claims, just after the dismissal decision, he was told it was because he was perceived as being too close to Mr O’Reilly and because of the newspaper group’s coverage of Mr O’Brien and the Moriarty tribunal.

Last May, he sought a High Court order to prevent his dismissal. While that was refused, the court granted injunctions, to apply pending further hearing, restraining INM from acting further on its decision to terminate his employment or divulging confidential information to the media in relation to his employment.

INM had denied it did anything unlawful and said he was made redundant as part of a decision to restructure and reduce costs.

The full hearing of Mr Brophy’s action opened yesterday before Ms Justice Mary Laffoy and is listed to last six days.

Outlining the case, Oisin Quinn said there had already been “a fairly dramatic public struggle” going on between Mr O’Brien and Mr O’Reilly for some time and, throughout that, Mr Brophy, in his executive role, had been dealing with press communications.

On April 19th, Mr O’Reilly stood down and his successor, Vincent Crowley, told Mr Brophy another PR consultant would handle the press release about it because Mr Brophy had worked with Mr O’Reilly and it might be difficult for him to do it, counsel said. Mr Brophy had the impression that would be a temporary situation.

On April 26th, the board decided to terminate Mr Brophy’s employment and a day later Mr Crowley told him his continued employment would be problematic because of recent coverage in Independent titles concerning Mr O’Brien and in particular over Mr O’Brien’s appearance beside Taoiseach Enda Kenny in New York.

Mr Crowley had also complained that Mr Brophy had not done enough to “re-cast the digital offerings of INM” but Mr Brophy said he had been somewhat frustrated in his efforts to do so.

In evidence, Mr Brophy said that while working for the Irish Mirror in 1998, he had written an article about Denis O’Brien which resulted in a successful libel action by Mr O’Brien. He had also broken stories related to the Moriarty tribunal which were “not particularly flattering of Mr O’Brien” and he knew Mr O’Brien was “not particularly forgiving of people who had slighted him”.