Family awarded £75K over false dine-and-dash allegations

A family falsely accused of leaving a restaurant without paying their bill have been awarded £75,000 in libel damages.

Peter and Ann McGirr, along with their children Peter Jr and Carol, from County Tyrone launched legal proceedings over a Facebook post by The Horse & Jockey in the Peak District in England in July 2024.

On Friday, the High Court in Belfast heard the McGirrs, who run a successful engineering firm, launched legal proceedings after CCTV images of them were posted online alleging they had left without paying the £150 restaurant tab.

The false allegations that they failed to settle their bill were repeated in a number of newspapers, the court was told.

The family's barrister, Peter Girvan, said the Facebook post falsely suggested that they had left the pub in Tideswell, Derbyshire, without paying for food and drink, referring to them as "dine-and-dashers".

He said these claims had caused significant embarrassment and reputational damage.

Similar accusations featured in at least four different newspaper reports, the court was told.

"These articles contained serious and defamatory accusations that the plaintiffs had engaged in dishonest and criminal conduct by deliberately absconding without settling a bill of approximately £150," Mr Girvan told the court.

"The allegations were entirely false.

"The plaintiffs had not engaged in any such conduct, and the statements made by the defendants had no factual basis."

As part of the settlement, the pub and its management agreed to pay £75,000 in damages and cover all legal costs.

An apology was also read out in court which acknowledged the distress caused and fully cleared the family of any wrongdoing.

Outside court, the family's solicitor said they felt "fully vindicated" by the outcome.

The defamatory content has since been removed from social media, and the pub has accepted that there was "no basis whatsoever" for the allegations.