A journalist has told the High Court she believed she was standing up for a midwife “just doing her job” when she wrote about the case of a man who sued over being interrupted for filming the moments after the birth of his first daughter.
Brenda Power, columnist with the Sunday Times, said she believed part of her role was to write about matters of injustice.
Such matters included the fact John McCauley had “hauled” the midwife who delivered his baby before the courts, suing her for €38,000 in a case dismissed in 2009, she said.“I thought it was appalling behaviour,” she said.
She was giving evidence on the second day of a defamation action by Mr McCauley against her and the Sunday Times over the March 2009 article which arose out of the dismissal of a separate action taken by Mr McCauley against Mount Carmel Hospital in Dublin and midwife Iris Halbach.
He had sued for breach of contract over the interruption at the hospital of his filming of the immediate aftermath of the birth of his first child Simone to his partner, Lithuanian teacher Jurgita Jachimaviciute, in September 2006.
'Appalled'
Ms Power said while Mr McCauley had got the chance to put his side during the 2009 court case, the midwife had not. Ms Power said she felt this was an injustice and she was "appalled" by him taking the case.
It was “bad enough” Mr McCauley attempted to continue to film after being asked by the midwife not to do so while the midwife was clearing the newborn’s airway but to go on and sue was “unforgiveable”, she said.
Ms Power said she was a mother of five, one of whom was born by Caesarean section just like Simone. She said Mr McCauley had sent a solicitor’s letter rather than a card and a bunch of flowers to the midwife who had helped deliver a healthy baby for him.
Her column was “not so much to have a go at Mr McCauley but to defend the midwife against this kind of vexatious, nasty, vindictive nonsense”, she said.
She believed Mr McCauley sued the midwife “for no other reason than to put this woman [the midwife] in her place”.
Under cross-examination by Mark Harty SC, for the defendants, who deny defamation, Mr McCauley, a property and construction consultant, did not accept the opinions expressed in Ms Power’s piece were valid or reasonable.
“The opinion I got from the complete article is that men are being described in general in a very derogatory way. If a woman or man held those views of men, then it could be their opinion, but I do not think it’s a reasonable opinion,” he said.
'Deplorable'
He and his partner were treated in a "deplorable way" by the midwife, particularly before the birth when Ms Halbach had reacted badly to a joke he made about missing the football on television that night, and had said "We're not going to feed it" when he asked his partner if she was hungry as she lay in bed.
Mr McCauley asked Mr Harty: “How would you feel if your wife turned around and she was made to feel like a second-class citizen?” While Ms Halbach was “very quiet” when the camera was running, she was “very rude and abrupt” at other times, he said.
The hearing continues.