The fact that the trial judge in the libel case taken by Mr Albert Reynolds against the Sunday Times had muddled the chronology of events was not enough to warrant a retrial, the Court of Appeal heard.
On the sixth day of the appeals arising out of the case, Mr James Price QC said he conceded that in one part of the trial judge's summing-up the chronology of the sequence of events did get taken out of order.
He accepted that there was a degree of muddle and that it was not put as clearly as it might have been. However, it was a short passage, and if the jury was listening one wondered how much they would have gathered at all. It was not as if they had been led up the garden path.
Mr Price was referring to the judge's summing-up in relation to the events in November 1994 which led to the collapse of the Fianna Fail/Labour Coalition Government and Mr Reynolds's resignation as Taoiseach.
The article appeared in the English edition of the Sunday Times. In November 1996 the jury found that Mr Reynolds was libelled by the article in the newspaper, but he was awarded zero damages. The judge subsequently awarded one penny.
Mr Price was making a submission in reply to Mr Reynolds's appeal that the judge's summing-up was grossly distorted.
Lord Justice Hirst, one of the three judges hearing the appeals, said that one thing a judge needed on summing-up was chronological discipline.
Mr Price said this was not enough to vitiate a trial which lasted four weeks, if they left out the blank days. "Before one sends litigation back for another four-week trial, because of a failure by the judge to follow strict chronology, there has to be the real possibility of some real problem having arisen from it", he said.
Lord Justice Hirst said the jury never got a chronological account, they just got these scraps, many of which were wrong.
Mr Price said that Mr Reynolds's case had been put across impeccably by the judge. The summing-up was a comprehensive and coherent account of what Mr Reynolds's case was.
The case continues today.