International Law

Appeal overturns food review case

By Eoin

Under the above headline, the BBC is reporting that “the Court of Appeal [in Northern Ireland] has quashed a controversial libel case, seen as a watershed for press freedom”. As already discussed on this blog (here, here and here) food critics writing restaurant reviews will usually be able to rely on the defence of fair comment. As I noted in an earlier post, the case arose out of a review of a Belfast pizzeria in the Irish News. According to the BBC report:

A £25,000 libel award was initially made to Goodfella’s pizza restaurant in Belfast, after a jury found the paper’s food critic’s review defamatory. The court has now ruled that the jury in the original trial had been misdirected on whether the opinions were defensible as fair comment.

Journalist Caroline Workman’s review criticised staff, the quality of food and drink, and the smokey atmosphere. Ciarnan Convery, the owner of the business, brought the libel action in February, 2007, claiming that the article was defamatory, damaging and hurtful.

Lawyers for the paper had defended their criticism of the restaurant on the basis of justification and fair comment. Delivering judgment, Lord Chief Justice Sir Brian Kerr said: “Although I consider it likely that a properly directed jury would conclude that a sufficient factual substratum existed for the comment… I cannot be certain that this is so and I would therefore order a retrial.”

The full text of the judgment is available for download here, and also should be available here here in due course.

Update: other coverage: Belfast Telegraph | BreakingNews.ie | Bloomberg | Canadian Press | ecademy | eircom.net | Food and Drink | Guardian | Ireland.com Breaking News | International Herald Tribune | Irish Examiner Breaking News | Irish Independent Breaking News | IOL | Media Law Prof Blog | New York Times Diner’s Journal | News Letter | O’Connall Street | Press Gazette | RTÉ News at 1 | Slugger O’Toole | UTV.

Update (11 March 2007) Further coverage: Guardian | Irish Times (sub req’d) | Times Online.

Full post as published by Cearta on March 10, 2008 (boomark / email).