An 80-year-old Waterford city hotelier was awarded €50,000 libel damages and costs yesterday after a High Court jury decided a reference to his hotel in a Sunday Worldarticle wrongly meant he was a brothel-keeper.
After the jury handed down its verdict following two hours of deliberation, Vincent O'Toole, owner of the Maryland Hotel at The Mall, Waterford, and a former master mariner and successful horse breeder, said he had been vindicated in bringing the case.
Asked for his views on the award, he said, "Fifty thousand - you would put that on a horse." In the jury's opinion, the amount was all right, but not in his.
Mr O'Toole said he felt "disillusioned" but, he added, people knew in their hearts that the reference to his hotel "was all a lie". The article was still demeaning his standing in Waterford city and elsewhere, he said.
The Sunday Worldarticle, published in the City Slicker column on August 1st, 2004, had stated that a website, www.upthedeise.com, had "come up with the first ever comprehensive Waterford dictionary".
The article went on to state: "some of the entries are fascinating like: . . . Maryland the, An infamous small hotel in the red light district of Waterford city. Colloquial term for a brothel."
In proceedings which opened on Wednesday before Miss Justice Elizabeth Dunne and a jury, Mr O'Toole alleged he was libelled in the article and that it meant he was a brothel-keeper. The jury yesterday decided that the words complained of did mean he was a brothel-keeper and assessed damages at €50,000.
During the three-day hearing, Mr O'Toole had said some men had come to his premises at night looking for prostitutes after the article was published. He said it had an appalling effect. He lived in the hotel with his family and men were knocking on the door at night. Being of a friendly disposition, he would invite them in and some would eventually ask him were there any "extra favours" and would directly ask for prostitutes. He would call the police and the men would run.
After reading the article, he had asked his solicitor to take up the matter with the newspaper and his solicitor wrote to them on August 4th. However, he said he regarded letters from the Sunday World after the incident as indicating "concocted counterfeit concern" and as an attempt to "buy him off".
In closing speeches, John Gordon SC, with Seamus Ó Tuathail SC, for Mr O'Toole, said the article was "salacious", printed beside a picture of a "nubile young lady" intended to engage the reader. This was "a smart-alec title" for a "smart-alec article" and was a "lousy" thing to do to his client.
The case had been dogged since August 2004 by the fact the Sunday Worldhad consistently refused to do the honourable thing and take responsibility for what had happened, counsel said. On the one hand, it had offered a conditional apology and, on the other, insisted it had not defamed Mr O'Toole.
However, Eoin McCullough SC, for the Sunday World, had urged the jury to conclude a reasonable reader would regard the article as "a joke" and "a spoof" not intended to be taken seriously, even if they didn't consider it was in good taste.
Any reasonable person who knew Mr O'Toole - who was not named in the article - could not think the article seriously meant he was a brothel-keeper, counsel said. However, even if the jury took that view, they should only award a sum of damages which was "very small indeed", counsel said. This was because Mr O'Toole had said the case was about vindicating his good name - and correspondence between solicitors showed that, from the beginning, the Sunday World was willing to apologise to Mr O'Toole. It had suggested various forms of apology and asked Mr O'Toole to forward his own proposed apology. When he did not do so, the newspaper had printed a unilateral apology.
The newspaper also accepted Mr O'Toole is a person of the utmost respectability and probity, Mr McCullough said.