About this case:

• Citation:
  [2025] IEHC 313
• Judgment:
  External link
• Court:
  High Court
• Judge:
  Mr Justice Anthony Barr

Delivering judgment for the High Court, Mr Justice Anthony Barr confirmed that “the default position is that the plaintiff should be allowed to pursue his/her action before the courts, unless the defendants can establish a clear case why a stay should be imposed in the interests of justice and in the interests of the efficient running of the civil justice system.”

Background

On 13 February 2024, the plaintiff solicitor issued High Court proceedings claiming that he was defamed in a book for sale on the US and UK websites owned and operated by the defendants. The plaintiff had issued a separate set of proceedings as against the publisher of the book, Georgetown University Press, on 20 July 2023.

The plaintiff alleged that the impugned statement implied inter alia that he is a subversive, covert agent of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) using his legal practice to unfairly and improperly target academic publishers, universities and social media companies in order to protect the interests of the political regime in the UAE and that he is an unethical solicitor.

The defendants sought a stay of the proceedings to which they were party pending the outcome of the proceedings against the publisher, submitting inter alia that both sets of proceedings shared common factors and that the plaintiff’s primary complaint was as against the author and/or publisher of the book, with the defendants having no knowledge of whether the statement complained of was true or false.

The High Court

Mr Justice Barr noted that the court in Kalix Fund Limited v HSBC International Trust Services (Ireland) Limited [2010] 2 IR 581 expressed that it had an inherent jurisdiction to manage the conduct of cases connected by significant factual or legal overlap for the purposes of bringing about a just and expeditious trial and minimising costs.

Emphasising the reasoning of former chief justice Frank Clarke in Kalix to the effect that a court should be reluctant to prevent progress in a party’s case simply because another case with the same or similar issues may come to hearing first, the court noted that the principles in Kalix had been restated in Avoncore Limited v Leeson Motors Limited & Ors. [2021] IEHC 163 and the principles in both cases adopted in Brophy v Independent News and Media plc [202]1 IEHC 713.

Having regard to the authorities, Mr Justice Barr determined that it was not appropriate to stay the proceedings before him until the conclusion of the plaintiff’s action against the publisher. 

The High Court had regard to the plaintiff’s constitutional right of access to the courts to vindicate his good name, noting that interference with this right was not in the interests of justice.

The court accepted that while there was delay on the plaintiff’s part, same was caused in large part by the decision on part of the defendants not to nominate solicitors within the jurisdiction which frustrated the timely progression of the proceedings.

Furthermore, Mr Justice Barr was not satisfied that the proceedings against the publisher were so far ahead of the proceedings before him such that it could be said with certainty that those proceedings would come on for hearing first, in circumstances where judgments were awaited in respect of interlocutory applications therein.

The judge also considered that “it is not permissible for a defendant to say to a plaintiff who has other proceedings in being, that they should progress their action against some other defendant; while in the meantime, that defendant will continue to make profits from selling the book which contains the alleged defamatory statement.”

Finding that the defendants had a binary choice — to stop selling the book once they had been put on notice that same allegedly defamed the plaintiff, or to continue to sell the book, Mr Justice Barr warned that the defendants could not “continue selling the book, thereby republishing the allegedly defamatory statement in the legal sense; while at the same time maintaining that the plaintiff cannot progress his action against him until he concludes other proceedings against other publishers of the alleged defamatory statement.”

The court also took into account inter alia the fact that the proceedings before him were at an early stage where a defence had yet to be filed by the defendants, resulting in future delay where the proceedings would have to be reactivated.

The court accepted the plaintiff’s submissions that the decisions on liability and any award of damages in the proceedings as against the publisher would not bind the proceedings before it in circumstances where both proceedings would be heard before different juries, and that the issues in both sets of proceedings were not identical.

Conclusion

Accordingly, the High Court refused the application for a stay on the proceedings.

Paul Tweed v Amazon.co Inc & Anor [2025] IEHC 313