Restaurant sues food critic for libel and wins.
- Restaurant critics throughout the UK are united in condemnation of a jury which upheld a libel action by a restaurateur. Irish News restaurant critic Caroline Workman, in a 2000 review of Belfast’s Goodfellas restaurant, described staff as unhelpful, the cola as flat and the chicken marsala as ‘so sweet as to be inedible’.
Calling the review ‘a hatchet job’, Goodfellas owner Ciaran Convery sued. The jury agreed Workman’s words were ‘defamatory, damaging and hurtful’ and awarded the restaurateur £25,000 in damages.
The paper is appealing the verdict and is backed by the National Union of Journalists.
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