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OVERVIEW
Prentice v. McPhilemy
DISCLAIMER:
As a part of the settlement of Prentice v. McPhilemy, Sean McPhilemy has withdrawn all statements or charges made against David and Albert Prentice. Any reference to the Prentices in these documents is reprinted purely for historical and archival purposes and does not reflect any current position held or taken by Mr. McPhilemy.
In one of the most closely watched defamation cases of the last dozen years, Russell Smith was among the counsel who defended Irish journalist Sean McPhilemy and Roberts Rinehart Publishers against a $100 million lawsuit in Washington, D.C. The suit, brought by two prominent car dealers from the north of Ireland, alleged the plaintiffs were falsely accused of involvement in an anti-Catholic murder conspiracy in the defendants' best-selling book, The Committee: Political Assassination in Northern Ireland. In the course of the proceedings, Russell helped win a precedent-setting decision, establishing the viability of the District of Columbia Free Flow of Information Act in protecting foreign journalists in libel cases. Expert witnesses for the defense included former Random House Publisher Harry Evans and Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan. The case ultimately settled after the first day of trial, when the plaintiffs dropped their demand for an apology and accepted a statement of regret, together with a $1 million payment from the defendants' insurance carrier, estimated to be approximately one half of the plaintiffs' legal fees and expenses. McPhilemy’s integrity as a journalist later was vindicated when 12 jurors in the London High Court, after hearing nearly 50 witnesses in an eight-week trial, awarded him a complete victory in his libel case against the conservative London newspaper, The Sunday Times. The Sunday Times alleged that McPhilemy, in his reporting on the Committee, had perpetrated a hoax upon the public. The English jury ruled that The Sunday Times had failed to prove its allegations. The jurors awarded McPhilemy £145,000 in damages, and the Court now is in the process of determining additional or “special” damages (likely to be several hundred thousand pounds), plus a likely award of well over one million pounds in legal fees and expenses. McPhilemy's legal team in London included James Price QC, a leading libel counsel who had previously represented The Sunday Times in several other high-profile cases, and Geoffrey Bindman, a solicitor famous for his human rights cases, such as the extradition proceeding against Gen. Augusto Pinochet. On June 12, 2001, the English Court of Appeal denied an appeal of the jury’s verdict, brought by The Sunday Times. In a stinging decision, the appeal court held that The Sunday Times’ appeal was “an abuse of process.” As a result, The Sunday Times is likely to be required to pay a grand total of over £ 6 million in damages, costs, and fees (including its own fees and those of McPhilemy).
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