The Ukrainian woman who survived the car crash in which Liam Lawlor died has initiated libel proceedings against six newspapers. Paul Cullen reports.
Julia Kushnir is suing the Sunday Independent, the Irish Independent, the Sunday Tribune, the Sunday World, the Observer and the Irish Sunday Mirror over their reporting of the crash in Moscow.
Lawyers for Ms Kushnir (29) said yesterday they hoped to get an early hearing for the cases in the High Court, possibly as soon as next October.
Statements of claim have been served and Ms Kushnir's pleadings are almost complete, her solicitors, Brian Lynch and Co of Galway, confirmed yesterday.
Ms Kushnir is proceeding with her case notwithstanding the fact that all the newspapers cited have either apologised or offered to do so for their coverage.
Mr Lawlor died last November when the car in which he was a passenger crashed on the road from Moscow airport to the city centre. Ms Kushnir, a law clerk living in Prague who was working as an interpreter for Mr Lawlor, was injured.
The Sunday Independent, using information provided by the Observer's correspondent in Moscow, wrongly suggested that Mr Lawlor was in the company of a teenage prostitute when he died. The story was "lifted" by other newspapers.
Ms Kushnir, who has already criticised the "reckless, vengeful and ill-corroborated" stories written about her in the press, is expected to travel to Ireland for the libel trial.
Up to now, she has shunned media publicity, apart from issuing one statement through her solicitors in which she asked to be left alone.
She has recovered from the injuries sustained in the crash, which also killed the other occupant of the car, Russian driver Ruslan Suliamanov.
However, lawyers say she is still shaken and has had to postpone taking her legal exams twice.
Her lawyers are not taking any libel cases outside Ireland, although they believe it was open to them to take action in foreign courts because articles about Ms Kushnir also appeared on the internet.
After Mr Lawlor's death, Independent Newspapers carried out an internal investigation into its reporting of the crash but did not disclose the results of this inquiry.