Restaurant review ruling appealed
Thursday January 24 2008
A DAILY newspaper has appealed against an award of £25,000 (€33,400) damages to the owner of an Italian restaurant when a critic's review of a meal was ruled by a jury to have been defamatory.
The Belfast-published 'Irish News' went before Northern Ireland's Lord Chief Justice Brian Kerr and two other Appeal Court judges yesterday seeking to overturn the finding.
The case is being watched by newspaper editors because of its implications for their publications.
Lord Lester QC, for the newspaper, said: "The appeal raises issues of great public importance."
Spelling out the wider implications of the case, he said the review was "written in good faith and without malice".
"It was an honest, critical and valued judgment by a food critic about her visit to the restaurant."
He added: "Although it was a food review, it could also have been a review written by a theatre or film critic."
Belfast food writer and restaurant critic Caroline Workman criticised the quality of the food and drink and staff at Goodfellas Restaurant and Pizzeria at Kennedy Way in west Belfast in a review in 2000.
Owner Ciaran Convery claimed the article was a hatchet job and sued.
A jury at Belfast High Court agreed with his lawyers, who claimed the review was defamatory, damaging and hurtful and the newspaper had failed to retract the review or apologise.
Lord Lester said a distinction needs to be drawn between a news report and a review.
He said the review was clearly laid out as a feature article in a weekly column and could not be mistaken for a factual report by the reader.
He said: "It was clear it was not dealing with a news report but a feature report.
"It did not purport to be a factual report by a food scientist, but a food critic explaining why she formed a poor opinion of her visit."
He claimed there was a "flawed direction" by the trial judge which led to a blurring of the lines between the newspaper's defence of fair comment and secondary defence of justification.
He said that nowhere in the judge's summing up to the jury was it made clear the article should be treated as a personal opinion by the food writer.
In what he described as the most important sentence of his presentation, he said: "At the very least, the learned judge ought to have directed the jury clearly on the difference between the substratum of fact required as the basis for a fair comment defence and the facts required to establish justification."
He continued: "He dissected each individual allegation as if it was a factual allegation which had to be justified. He failed to distinguish between the defence of fair comment and the defence of justification."
The case is expected to run for two days, with the three judges reserving their judgment until a later date.
- Ian Graham
