Faced with an unreliable source and a change in the legal standard, Sean McPhilemy, author of The Committee: Political Assassination in Northern Ireland, and his publisher, Roberts Rinehart Publishing, agreed to a $1 million settlement in a libel suit filed by two businessmen from Northern Ireland named in the book as part of a secret committee involved in the murder of Irish republicans and random Catholics.
As part of the settlement, McPhilemy and his publisher also issued a statement of regret and said that "David and Albert Prentice are not and have never been members" of the secret committee or involved in any of the activities described in the book. The Prentice brothers are car dealers in Northern Ireland; the suit had originally asked for $100 million in damages.
The Prentices' lawyer, William W. Taylor III of the firm Zuckerman, Spaeder, Goldstein, Taylor & Kolker, told PW that "our clients are pleased to have their names cleared and pleased with the settlement."
Despite the settlement, Russell Smith, McPhilemy's U.S. lawyer, said that McPhilemy "still believes that the book's charges are true, but he has dropped the Prentices [from his claims]." The charges made in McPhilemy's book are based on the claims of James Sands, who has been an unreliable witness from the beginning. Sand recanted his original story to McPhilemy and switched sides several times before finally threatening to testify for the Prentices if the suit went to trial. Smith added that the judge in the case "lowered the standard from malice to negligence. The trial would be about whether the publisher adhered to normal journalistic standards." Smith continued, "It was a gutsy effort by RR to publish this book, but it would have been hard to present it as within the norm. We would have risked a multimillion-dollar judgment against us."
The future of the Colorado-based Irish interest publisher Roberts Rinehart Publishing is unclear, although sources said the company is close to being sold. Since the suit was filed, the company has been forced to lay off employees and cut back its operations. Rick Rinehart, publisher of Roberts Rinehart, failed to return several phone calls from PW.
Copies of The Committee remain on the market, although any new editions will delete the Prentices names. According to Taylor, the two parties are also in arbitration over a disputed second libel insurance policy on the paperback edition that would pay the Prentices $600,000. The matter will be arbitrated in 60 days.
News of the settlement follows in the wake of McPhilemy's victory in his own libel suit against the Sunday Times of London in April.
