A BUSINESSWOMAN was awarded £70,000 plus costs in the High Court yesterday in a libel action she took over an article by Hugh Leonard in the Sunday Independent five years ago.
On the fifth day of the case, the jury of seven men and four women took just over 1 1/2 hours to reach its verdict.
Mr Justice Geoghegan granted a stay in the event of an appeal provided £35,000 is paid to Ms Noelle Campbell-Sharpe within 21 days and that interest is paid on any balance eventually found to be due.
The "Leonard's Log" column of April 26th, 1992, stated: "A lady telephones on behalf of Noelle Campbell-Sharpe and asks if I should be gracing Phil the Fluther's Ball in Killarney. It is only a few months since, after Captain Bob had gone a bob-bob-bobbing, Ms Noelle Campbell-Sharpe's publishing company went to the wall owing me £5,000 for services rendered.
"The lady did not call then with her commiserations or to ask me if I was in need of a crust. But I am glad that she herself, to no one's surprise, avoided the workhouse. I hope she will forgive my not attending the Kerry Ball. To use an expression much in vogue across the Atlantic, I gave at the office."
Answering a number of questions put to them, the jury found that the words in the article were not true and were defamatory. They awarded damages of £70,000 but made no award when asked if additional damages, if any, ought to be awarded following a colour feature article and a heading on a report in the Irish Independent last Thursday.
Ms Campbell-Sharpe said she had owned Irish Tatler Publications. In 1989, it was stated, she sold 51 per cent of the shareholding to Maxwell Communications, and in 1990-91 she sold her remaining 49 per cent to Maxwells.
After selling her shareholdings, Campbell-Sharpe Associates was formed and there was an agreement that she would act as a consultant to ITP.
Maxwells came up with the idea of an Irish hotels and restaurants guide and she felt Mr Leonard was the person to be identified with it and to write for it. She recommended a £5,000 payment on publication and another £5,000 30 days later. She did not know at the time a clause had been inserted, contrary to what she had proposed, promising the whole £10,000 in the event of non-publication.
The court heard that Mr Leonard had been paid £5,000. Mr Maxwell died in November 1991 and ITP went into liquidation in January 1992. Mr Leonard later lodged a claim with the ITP liquidator for £5,000. He said he never heard of the Maxwell connection until after his death.
Earlier, Mr Justice Geoghegan, in his summing up, said the defendants were denying that, even if the jury came to the conclusion that the words were untrue, they were defamatory. They said a reasonable reader of the Sunday Independent would interpret them in the way Mr Leonard had stated in the witness box that he intended them. Mr Leonard had suggested he was not attacking her character.
The judge said Ms Campbell-Sharpe had claimed the words were very much defamatory. She was a lady well known in the publishing business who was often written about and her reputation was of great importance to her.
Mr Frank Clarke SC, for the Sunday Independent, in his closing speech had said that, when the jury looked at the action in an ordinary commonsense way, it could only come to a conclusion that it was "a storm in a teacup".
The article had been, written as a diary" and in a particular style which poked fun. That did not mean somebody who wrote in that style had carte blanche to write whatever they liked. The rules of libel applied equally.
The jury had to consider what the words "Ms Campbell-Sharpe's company meant. It was not suggested that at the time the company went into liquidation Ms Campbell-Sharpe owned any shares in it. That had always been clear.
The "drift" of the article was exactly what Mr Leonard had said in the witness box. It had not been intended to suggest Ms Campbell-Sharpe owed him money. There was one reference in the article that it was her company and not her.
Much had been made that somehow, within the article, it had been implied that Ms Campbell-Sharpe actually owed the money herself. There was no such implication and none could reasonably be drawn. It was an allegation about a company and not about a person, he said.
Mr Patrick Geraghty SC, for Ms Campbell-Sharpe, said Mr Leonard and the independent group were fully aware, and had now admitted, that Ms Campbell-Sharpe was not the owner of ITP and not the person who owed money to Mr Leonard.
Then came the article written by Mr Leonard, three months after he was fully aware of the facts. And why did he write it? Because somebody phoned him stating she was calling on behalf of Ms Campbell-Sharpe and asking him to make a charitable contribution.
It was hurtful to have implied Ms Campbell-Sharpe was a dishonest person. She had a deserved reputation for honesty and integrity and that had not been questioned in court.