The Sunday Times has failed in an Appeal Court challenge to a High Court libel finding in favour of TV journalist Sean McPhilemy.
McPhilemy was awarded £145,000 damages in March last year over allegations that he produced a "hoax" programme about high-level involvement in Northern Ireland loyalist death squads.
The jury rejected the paper’s bid to prove that, on the balance of probabilities, a committee of murder conspirators did not exist.
In its appeal, on which a full judgment is expected next month, the paper claimed that the jury’s findings were against the weight of the evidence and were perverse.
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