Bailey recovering damages 'would be absurd', says defence
For Ian Bailey to be awarded damages for libel would be absurd, after coming to court to tell lie after lie, the defence team claimed today in their summing up of the case.
“A person has a right to reputation but no person has a right to come to court to tell lie after lie after lie.
"If you believe Mrs Farrell (Marie Farrell said Mr Bailey pressurised her not to say she saw him a mile from Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s home on the night she was murdered), he not alone lied, he tried to destroy the reputation of a large number of people on the way.
“No person, whether they suffered injury to body or reputation or mind can recover damages in that instance.
“He (Mr Bailey) is telling people he committed murder and he is suing newspapers who don’t say that. For him to recover damages would be absurd,” Paul Gallagher, senior counsel for the seven newspapers being sued said this afternoon.
He said not one of the articles complained of had alleged that Mr Bailey committed a murder but they had described him as a suspect.
He referred to evidence by Malachi Reed and Mr and Mrs Ritchie and Rosie Shelley that on
two separate occasions, almost two years apart, Mr Bailey confessed to murder.
Mr Bailey did not deny the words but said that he prefaced them with the phrase, “They say.” In other words, he did not commit the murder but people were saying he did.
The plaintiff’s barrister, James Duggan, will sum up Mr Bailey’s case tomorrow and Judge Patrick J. Moran said he hoped to give judgement on January 9.
Judge Moran remarked yesterday, “The citizen’s good name is what this case is all about and how far they (the press) are entitled to go.”
Mr Gallagher explained the interesting decision not to call the journalists who wrote the articles to give evidence.
He said that where justification and partial justification were being used as a defence, the onus was on them to call people to prove what was being said in the articles.
He also said that the plaintiff was claiming that his reputation had been damaged but that he already had a reputation for violence.
"We do not put a tooth in it, we say the plaintiff's evidence was wholly and utterly unreliable and he sought to mislead the court in many significant respects. That is a grounds for rejecting the claim (for compensation)," Mr Gallagher said.
There are some remarkable facts in this case including the unprecedented level of interest in the case.
And the approach to the articles was no different to the approach by the plaintiff when he wrote articles.
"The papers (complained of by the plaintiff) published matters of serious public concern. If the defendant companies had engaged in any other approach it would have been alleged that they were involved in some sort of favouritism because he (Mr Bailey) was a journalist," Mr Gallagher said.
