Filmmakers sued over Amazon Prime documentary about 'Scissor Sisters' murderers
Ray Managh
The makers and publishers of a documentary called “The Murderous Scissor Sisters” are being sued for breach of privacy and data rights by two people who cannot be identified by court order.
The plaintiffs involved in Thursday’s proceedings are not the two sisters, Charlotte and Linda Mulhall, dubbed by the media as the Scissor Sisters who had been convicted of the murder in March 2005 of Farah Swaleh Noor.
It is alleged in Thursday’s legal proceedings against Amazon Digital UK Ltd (Amazon Prime) and Irish company Twodeetv Ltd (Peninsula Television) that they breached data rights and the privacy of the two plaintiffs identified only as Wx and Yz.
Amazon Digital has an address at Worship Street, London, and on Thursday Judge John O’Connor granted barrister Michael O’Doherty, counsel for the two plaintiffs, leave to serve proceedings outside of the Irish jurisdiction of the Circuit Civil Court on the UK company.
Mr O’Doherty, who appeared with Lavelle Partners Solicitors for the two claimants, told Judge O’Connor that solicitors for Amazon Prime, a streaming platform and broadcaster of the documentary series, had, on instructions of Amazon, refused to accept service of the proceedings through normal channels.
Judge O’Connor heard that Twodeetv Ltd, an Irish company trading as Peninsula Television and the second intended defendant in the case, had offices at Westmoreland House, Westmoreland Park, Ranelagh, Dublin 6, and service on them of proceedings did not create a problem.
The two plaintiffs claim the intended defendants had failed to respect the confidentiality of their personal data and privacy. They allege that as a result of the broadcast they have suffered acute stress, anxiety and depression, loss, damage and inconvenience on account of the broadcast.
The sisters, from Tallaght, Dublin, murdered and dismembered Noor who was killed with a Stanley knife allegedly wielded by Charlotte and allegedly struck with a hammer by Linda following a confrontation by them with their mother.
The murder trial in 2006 heard that Noor’s head and penis were sliced off and the rest of his corpse dismembered and dumped in the Royal Canal in Dublin where a piece of leg, still wearing a sock, had been spotted floating near Croke Park 10 days later.
The presiding judge at the murder trial, the late Mr Justice Paul Carney, in sentencing the sisters, said it was “the most grotesque killing that has occurred in my professional lifetime.”
