ALBERT Reynolds did not lie about his understanding of the significance of the Duggan case. But Dick Spring believed that he did, his handlers believed that he did and this was why he left the Government. Alan Ruddock believed this and wrote it, and his editor John Witherow published it. They did so in good faith, and therefore did not act maliciously.
So Albert Reynolds, although he was libelled by those who stated he lied, did not have his reputation damaged and did not deserve any damages. This is the meaning of yesterday's extraordinary verdict by the London jury in the libel case brought by Mr Reynolds against the Sunday Times.
The jury had been asked to decide "on the balance of probabilities" whether Mr Reynolds lied to or misled the Dail. The Sunday Times failed, despite four days of interrogating the former Taoiseach in the witness box, to prove that he had.
However, it was clear that there was some doubt in the minds of at least some jurors on this question, as revealed by their requests, first, for the transcripts of all his evidence, then for the sections which dealt with when he knew about the Duggan case, and, finally, for definitions of a "fib" and a "lie".
Mr Reynolds had admitted in evidence that he knew about the Duggan case on the Monday. But, as Lord Williams and Mr Justice French had stressed, did he fully appreciate its significance?
His evidence was that he had asked for a written report on the case, and none had been put before him before he made his speech on the Tuesday. He did not see the letter dealing with the matter before 9 p.m. that night. No one disputed that evidence.
Was it true that he gave the Dail "all the information" in his possession at that time about whether the Father Brendan Smyth case was the first in which the "lapse of time" element in the extradition legislation had been used, or did he deliberately hide from them what he knew of the Duggan case?
The only way the Sunday Times could prove this was to call those directly involved to give evidence against him. As their witnesses admitted in court, those who gave different versions of events, Eoghan Fitzsimons, Dick Spring and other Labour ministers, had refused to come to court.
The only other avenue open to them was to throw doubt on Albert Reynolds's version of events through cross-examination, and bring in evidence from other sources which contradicted his version. They were forced to rely on the written and recorded words of the main actors in the Dail and the hearings of the select committee into the fall of the government.
James Price QC, for the newspaper, spent four days trying to break down Mr Reynolds's story. He accused him of lying to the Dail to save his government, contrasted his recollection of events with that of his Attorney General, quoted his own minister, Dr Michael Woods, to cast doubt on his version of events and suggested he doctored the speech prepared for him.
Mr Reynolds countered with the claim that Mr Fitzsimons had a faulty recollection of events; Dr Woods might have noted that he had said Harry Whelehan could have the next position on the High Court, but he didn't remember it; it might have been Martin Manseragh who wrote that bit ... this Mr Price interjected: "That's not true, is it? Martin Manseragh was not involved in any way in this section of the speech." Mr Reynolds then thought it might have been Noel Dempsey, to which Mr Price responded: "Are you looking for someone else to blame?"
When the reading of the excerpts from the hearings of the Dail select committee began the judge apologised to the jury for the "indigestible" evidence they were about to hear. He said it was "difficult to absorb".
No one in court would have argued with that. But it was the only way that the Sunday Times team could have produced evidence to corroborate its version of events. Aware of this, Lord Williams, on behalf of Mr Reynolds, insisted on the inclusion of sections which would support his client's side of the story. The result was to add to the confusion.
Nonetheless, Mr Price must have hoped that, especially by showing Mr Spring and Mr Fitzsimons on video, they would appear as more credible than Mr Reynolds in court and his party colleagues on video.
HE HAD one thing on his side. As it happens, all three witnesses from the select committee and Dail hearings on whom he relied - Mr Spring, Mr Fitzsimons and the former Attorney General and President of the High Court, Harry Whelehan, are lawyers, and used to presenting cases to tribunals precisely. While the contribution of Fianna Fail TD Willie O'Dea could be the subject of jokes about elocution lessons, the diction of these three was crystal clear.
Mr Fitzsimons, later described by Mr Price as an "honest man, a distinguished man" gave evidence to the committee that he had seen Mr Reynolds and other Fianna Fail ministers a total of seven times on that Monday. "As far as I was concerned the Taoiseach was crystal clear about the Duggan case on the Monday," he said, adding that Maire Geoghegan-Quinn also understood its significance.
But on Tuesday she rang him up to say they had decided not to use it. She, the Taoiseach and Bertie Ahern had also read his "letter of advices" on the matter in his presence, Mr Fitzsimons said.
In the video of his speech to the select committee, Mr Spring quoted his speaking note for the fateful meeting with Mr Reynolds on Wednesday morning, which said that the latter's speech to the Dail on Tuesday was "misleading, untrue and concealed the facts".
This had not been read to the Dail during his speech explaining the Labour Party's withdrawal from government, but it was the subject of a lot of discussion in court.
So after all this the jury decided, on the balance of probabilities, that Mr Reynolds did not deliberately hide from the Dail or his Cabinet colleagues what he knew of the Duggan case on the Tuesday.
BUT they clearly also thought that it was quite understandable that Dick Spring and his colleagues had thought that he did, and had passed on this judgment to journalists. They also thought that this opinion did not seriously damage his reputation. This must be largely due to two other planks of the defence case - Mr Reynolds's general credibility, and what had been written in the Irish newspapers at the time.
Mr Price attempted to build up a picture of a man he described in his summing up as "a gambler", to associate him with the "sleaze" for which British politicians are becoming famous.
He did so by introducing, though only after protracted legal argument, the saga of the Beef Tribunal and the story of the Masri passports affair.
Here, on the whole, he failed to dent Mr Reynolds's credibility seriously. Lord Williams pointed out that Mr Spring had exonerated him of any wrong-doing in the passports affair, and Mr Justice French pointed out that Mr Justice Hamilton had essentially done the same in the Beef Tribunal report. But the suggestion of "sleaze" must have had at least a subliminal effect on the jury.
The other area which was very damaging for Mr Reynolds was the evidence that other Irish newspapers had been very critical of him at the time.
These articles were only admitted after many more hours of legal argument, and then only in order to raise the question of his credibility, not as proof or otherwise of his allegations. But the result was devastating.
Passage after passage was read out from the Sunday Independent, the Irish Independent, the Irish Times, the Sunday Tribune, all highly critical of Mr Reynolds.
Gene Kerrigan in the Sunday Independent was quoted as saying: "His speech was a carefully concocted piece of deception, concocted with the help of his Fianna Fail colleagues", and the Irish Times's editorial was quoted describing him as "a political bully behind a smiling face ... with a cynical indifference to those principles of public office which don't suit his purposes".
These newspapers - and there was more, Mr Price added - had called him a liar and a deceiver of the Dail. Why had he not sued them? He had not seen them at the time, Mr Reynolds replied. He had read them only when they were drawn to his attention by his lawyer a few weeks ago.
Not a single newspaper all that week?
No.
And on the Sunday, when the family, as he had explained, always went to Mass and then collected all the Sunday papers?
No, on that Sunday he didn't open a single one.
And what about his family?
He discouraged them from reading the newspapers on that day too. He was trying to get over the trauma of his resignation. They all were. He wanted to put it behind him, to look to the future, not to be bitter.
Well then, what about his Cabinet colleagues? If what he said was true, they had also been libelled in these reports. Did not one of them come to him and say: "Albert, have you seen the dreadful things they are saying about us?"
No, not one, according to Mr Reynolds, though by now his voice was beginning to lack conviction.
Mr Price was incredulous. So were the journalists present in court. The judge also looked sceptical. It is very likely that the jury shared this scepticism.
There was one central weakness in the Sunday Times's case. While the team of journalists working on the story of the fall of the government had examined both the Fianna Fail and Labour Party versions of events, this resulted in two different stories being published in two different editions.
Its Irish editor, Alan Ruddock, author of the story for the English edition, did not use any of the material gleaned by Vincent Browne and published in Ireland for the version aimed at an English audience. The English edition thus presented essentially one point of view - that of Dick Spring and the Labour Party.
Mr Ruddock also admitted in cross-examination that he had not spoken to anyone on the Fianna Fail side before writing the article, and that he did not have a single note on which it was based.
Much was made of this in Lord Williams's summing up, as the failure to find out or present both sides of the story has a bearing on a legal finding of malice.
However, much to the surprise of the media present, no mention of this was made by Mr Justice French in his charge to the jury. He also glossed over the publication of two different versions of the events in the two different editions, and presented this as eminently reasonable.
This would have undermined one of the strongest planks in the case presented by Mr Reynolds's team, especially in relation to malice. If there is an appeal, as is likely, it is probably that this will feature in the grounds for appeal.