About this case:

• Citation:
  [2025] IEHC 90
• Judgment:
  External link
• Court:
  High Court
• Judge:
  Mr Justice Conleth Bradley

Delivering an judgment for the High Court, Mr Justice Conleth Bradley remarked that the untrue words describing the company “as ‘cowboys’, ‘gangsters’, ‘absolute con men’ and that the ‘gardai’ were ‘investigating the removing of items’ would lead a reader of those reviews, i.e., in the eyes of reasonable members of society, to conclude that the reviewer who had engaged the company thought they conmen who had had stolen property and that the gardaí were investigating the matter”.

Background

The plaintiff company sued the defendants, a separated couple, for defamation in respect of multiple online reviews which falsely alleged that the plaintiff engaged in criminal conduct.

The events leading to the reviews occurred in January 2022, when the company was engaged to carry out work to the heating system of a property at 33 Lower Mount Pleasant Avenue, Ranelagh, Co Dublin.

The works carried out involved approximately four hours of labour and the plaintiff provided evidence that, while the gas boiler in the house appeared to be working, a problem arose in relation to the external circulating water pump which had stopped working and replacement and additional parts. The works also included addressing leaks in the property.

The first defendant refused to pay for the works carried out, stating that he was of the view that the job as initially priced was for the service of the boiler and that the price had doubled when the job was carried out. The plaintiff company removed the installed parts when the first defendant refused to pay for the works, leading to a heated exchange and the posting of the defamatory allegations online by the defendants.

On 23 October 2023, the High Court granted the plaintiff judgment in default of appearance to the plaintiff, and an application for the assessment of damages came before Mr Justice Bradley thereafter.

The High Court

The High Court set out sections 31 and 32 of the Defamation Act 2009 (as amended) which deal with questions of damages and had regard to inter alia the ‘brackets’ of damages for defamation as set out by the Supreme Court in Higgins v The Irish Aviation Authority [2022] IESC 13.

The court also considered the judgment of Mr Justice Nolan in Casey v McMenamin [2024] IEHC 705, wherein the High Court opined on the factors to be considered when assessing damages “which include the nature and gravity of any allegation and the defamatory statement concerned, the means of publication of it, the extent that the statement was circulated, the importance of the plaintiff of his reputation in the eyes of recipients of the statement and the evidence of the reputation of the plaintiff”.

Turning to the case before him, Mr Justice Bradley was not satisfied that certain of the defamatory reviews pleaded were published online by the defendants. The first defendant accepted responsibility for four out of the 10 reviews published, which described the plaintiff company as inter alia a “rogue trader” and “con men”. The court was not convinced that any of the reviews could be attributed to the second defendant.

Dara Keogh, the managing director of the plaintiff, described the allegations as destructive of the company’s reputation, in circumstances where the company worked for leading colleges such as Gonzaga College, and churches and embassies around Dublin.

Mr Keogh also gave evidence of decreases in sales for periods following the reviews which he attributed to the defamatory reviews posted, although the court, while accepting that the allegations had a general reputational damage on the company, did not accept that those allegations caused the reduced sales.

Mr Justice Bradley was satisfied that “the reviews far exceed what might be described as the normal criticism associated with the cut and thrust of business and are, in my view, defamatory of the company. They allege criminal conduct on the part of the company. They allege, for example, that there is an investigation by An Garda Síochána arising from property allegedly taken by the company.”

Confirming that the provisions of the 2009 Act applied equally to bodies corporate as they do to natural persons, and that the tort of defamation was actionable per se without proof of special damage, the High Court accepted that the posting of online reviews has the potential for wide circulation and that word of mouth was an important factor in generating business for the company.

The court also had regard to the fact that two of the reviews were removed after 24 hours and that two were removed after four days, constituting a relatively short period during which the reviews were posted online, and to the expression of regret on part of the first defendant at the hearing of the assessment of damages, although this did not amount to an apology in the manner described in the 2009 Act.

Having regard to Higgins and Casey, Mr Justice Bradley was of the view that the damages in the case came within the ‘moderate’ level of seriousness of defamation and found that the plaintiff was entitled to an award of €40,000.

Conclusion

Accordingly, the High Court awarded €40,000 to the plaintiff company and put the matter in for mention at a later date to any other matters including costs.

Stillorgan Gas Heating and Plumbing Limited v James Manning and Julie Manning [2025] IEHC 90