A verdict is expected today in a High Court action in which a former prisoner alleges he was libelled by a photograph and article published in the then Cork Examiner newspaper which, the man claims, implied that he was a sex offender.
Mr Finbarr Hill (27), a sheet metal worker, of Springfield, Clonmel, has complained that, while serving a three-year sentence in Cork Prison in the mid-1990s for assault on a garda, he was libelled when a photograph showing him in a cell in C wing of the prison was published by the then Cork Examiner (now the Irish Examiner) beside an article claiming that those housed in C wing were sex offenders.
It is alleged that on October 25th 1995 the newspaper falsely and maliciously published an article and photograph of Mr Hill under a heading: "Isolation of Cork Jail's C wing". It was stated that C wing was home to the jail's sex offenders - "a collection of rapists and child molesters".
Mr Hill said he was housed in C wing at the time, but was not on the floor on which sex offenders were detained. He had never been charged with or convicted of any type of sex offence. The newspaper had issued a clarification but had never offered him an apology or expressed regret.
The newspaper admits that the words complained of were published but denies that the plaintiff suffered injury to his reputation. On November 21st 1995, it had published a statement saying it wished to make clear that Mr Hill had neither been incarcerated for, nor convicted of, any sexual offences.
Mr Michael O'Higgins SC, for Mr Hill, said that the newspaper had been careless in not explaining that the vast majority of prisoners in C wing in the mid-1990s were there for "ordinary" offences, not sex crimes.