Naked sleepwalker wins €10m in record-breaking Irish libel case

[Turborama]

Source: The Guardian

Owen Bowcott
Thursday November 18 2010 17.13 GMT

A businessman was celebratingtoday after winning a €10m libel case following a bizarre naked sleepwalking incident.

Donal Kinsella, 67, from Dunleer in County Louth, Ireland, took the case against his employer, Kenmare Resources, after the firm issued a press release that, he claimed, suggested he had made inappropriate advances to a female colleague while on a business trip to Africa in 2007.

The sum is more than five times larger than any previous Irish libel settlement. The court in Dublin ordered that only €500,000 be paid out pending an expected appeal.

In a statement issued today, Kenmare Resources, a Dublin-based mining company, promised to apply to the supreme court "with a view to setting aside both the verdict and the amount, with the intention of securing a retrial".

The hearing centred on a July 2007 press release, which said that the board of the company was seeking Kinsella's resignation after "an incident" near the Moma titanium mineral mines in Mozambique. It was said that he sleepwalked naked to the room of the firm's secretary, Deirdre Corcoran. The jury heard that Kinsella was a regular somnambulist. He had also been drinking and taking painkillers.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/nov/18/naked-sleepwalker-record-libel-payout

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. k 4 title

[rfranklin]

2. I was sleepwalking when I....

climbed into bed with that Michigan State coed at the Holiday Inn Express....I swear!

[provis99]

3. drunk, stoned, naked, and chasing a secretary.

Yep. That's what "sleepwalkers" do. :eyes:
They should have asked him how many times he's burned himself, or fallen down stairs, like a real sleepwalker does.

[truthisfreedom]

4. Well that's one way to make money, I suppose. I just haven't been using my imagination.

Hmm.