The Ukrainian woman who survived the car crash in which Liam Lawlor died begins five separate libel actions against Irish newspapers in the High Court this week.
The first case taken by Julia Kushnir, against the Sunday World, is due to start tomorrow before Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne.
Proceedings against the Sunday Independentand the Irish Sunday Mirrorare listed to begin on Wednesday. Ms Kushnir's case against the Sunday Tribuneis due to begin on Thursday and the final case, against the Irish Independent, starts on Friday.
All the newspapers are being sued over their reporting of the crash in Moscow in 2005. Ms Kushnir, a translator who lives in Prague, settled a sixth action, against the Observer, for €100,000 earlier this year.
Ms Kushnir (31) claims she was libelled when it was wrongly suggested Mr Lawlor was with a teenage prostitute at the time of his death. Character witnesses have travelled from Israel, Russia, the US and China to give evidence.
Earlier this year, the Sunday Worldlost a High Court application to compel Ms Kushnir to lodge €30,000 in court as security towards legal costs if her case fails. Lawyers for the Sunday Worldand Independent Newspapers, which owns the Sunday Independentand the Irish Independent, also tried unsuccessfully to have the cases heard together.
Mr Lawlor died in October 2005 when the car in which he was a passenger crashed on the road from Moscow airport to the city centre. His Russian driver, Ruslan Suliamanov, was also killed and Ms Kushnir, working as an interpreter for the former Fianna Fáil TD, was injured.
After Mr Lawlor's death, Independent News and Media had an internal investigation into the Sunday Independent'sreporting but did not disclose the results.
