The decision-makers at Aldi’s Irish headquarters, in Naas, Co Kildare, appear never to have heard of the Streisand Effect, but it is a phenomenon they would do well to brush up on.
Back in 2003, the singer and sometime actor sued the hardly famous California Coastal Records Project on privacy grounds because its online picture archive covering the state's coastline featured shots of her Malibu mansion. The keyboard warriors of the internet took umbrage at the attempts by the high-profile star to suppress the low-key archivists and thousands of links appeared online pointing millions of people to the pictures of her lovely home.
Then the US courts flatly rejected her lawsuit, leaving her not only with egg on her face but her privacy far more compromised than it would have been if she had just let things be.
This week Aldi got a taste of what happens when you try to use the courts to keep yourself out of the news.
At Ennis District Court, Judge Patrick Durcan heard a case involving two young sisters who "fell violently ill" almost two years ago after consuming a pot of custard dessert bought at an Aldi store in Ennis. The court heard lab tests found a mould pellicle in the product, and the judge approved a joint Personal Injuries Assessment Board payout of €4,374 including costs. The sisters ended up with €1,500 each.
So why was the story featured prominently across the national media? Because the multibillion-euro retailer had asked the court to grant it a cloak of anonymity.
Aldi’s barrister Niamh Ó Donnabhain told the unimpressed judge: “Liability between the first and second named defendant [the producer of the yoghurt and Aldi itself] is a live issue and as a result of that, I would plead that there wouldn’t be any publication in the matter.”
Flatly refusing the application, the judge said there was a constitutional imperative that justice be administered in public, and he commented wryly that Aldi's plea was "the kind of argument that Mr Volkswagen would love to hear".
It was that comment and the misguided attempt by Aldi to shield itself from the glare of publicity that saw the story splashed all over the national press within hours. And now here too.
Aldi might reflect on the fact that the public is, generally speaking, pretty forgiving. Things go wrong, mistakes happen, problems occur, and food can get contaminated.
Frequently it is not what has happened but how it is handled after the fact that becomes the central story.
There was no crime to cover up in the Aldi case, just an unfortunate event, but the old maxim still applies. The cover-up is worse than the crime. Always.
