Gerry Kelly defamation failure is the third such Sinn Fein libel case to have fallen flat in two months

Mr Carson – who is no longer a councillor or a DUP member – had written on Facebook back in April 2021 that he expected a new DUP leader would put Ms O’Neill back “in her kennel”.

Master Bell ruled in the High Court in Belfast that, given Mr Carson’s relatively lowly position as a councillor, his comments had basically no impact on her reputation.

As a result she was not entitled to damages, and both she and Mr Carson were left footing their own legal bills of about £13,000 (although this sum could stand to bankrupt Mr Carson).

In handing down judgement, Master Bell was clear that Ms O'Neill should never have brought the case to begin with.

"There are litigants before the High Court who are suing over serious birth injuries which they allege were caused by medical negligence," he said.

"Road accidents which have led to catastrophic injuries. High value commercial conflicts which often threaten the employment of many employees...

"When the court’s time is taken up with cases involving disputes between politicians involving insults which one imagines are sometimes heard in school playgrounds or outside pubs on Saturday nights, then serious cases of the type I have mentioned inevitably suffer delay.

"This is undesirable and not in the public interest. These kind of minor cases should not be the subject of High Court proceedings."

The second recent occasion when a judge has dismissed the arguments of a Sinn Fein litigant was on November 29 in Dublin's High Court.

On that occasion, Mr Charles Meenan delivered a ruling involving a Sinn Fein constituency organiser called Liam Lappin.

He was suing Mediahuis, the publisher of the Belfast Telegraph and Sunday Life, Belfast Telegraph editor Suzanne Breen, and freelance journalist Ruth Dudley Edwards.

The reason was because The Sunday Life had published an article containing a picture, taken at Sinn Fein's Newry and Armagh Christmas party.

This picture showed a man called Frank McCabe whom the paper described as "officer commanding of the IRA in south Armagh" and Sinn Fein MLA Conor Murphy, and the subsequent article went on to mention the infamous south Armagh murder of Paul Quinn.

Liam Lappin also happened to be one of the 14 people in that photograph, though there was nothing in the story or in the photo caption that identified him.

Instead the caption said: “Pals: Conor Murphy (circled left) and Frank McCabe (circled right) out in a restaurant with friends...”

Mr Lappin claimed that this picture implied that he "a member of a criminal terrorist murder gang", a "blackgaurd", and someone who "wilfully perverts the course of justice", among other things.

In throwing out his case, the judge described such a claim as “strained”, “forced” and “utterly unreasonable”.

"Though a “reasonable reader” would condemn the activities of the IRA," he said, "I cannot see that he or she would conclude that being present in a photograph of a social event with others, including a member of the IRA, in the context of an article and headlines neither of which refer to or identify the plaintiff, would convey the meanings contended for by the plaintiff."