Associated Newspapers-owned Irish Daily Mail has been sued. (Credit: Associated Newspapers)

The Irish Mail has been sued after it published a wraparound of the Irish Tribune newspaper, Editor and Publisher reported.  The Tribune went into receivership last month because it had funding issues.  It wasn’t published on Feb. 6, but the Mail put a wraparound with the Tribune’s masthead on some of its Feb. 6 editions, which led to accusations that the Mail was trying to pose as the Tribune.

The Irish Times reported that the Tribune Newspapers’ receiver Jim Luby’s lawyer John Gordon is “seeking damages, including ‘exemplary damages’ over this ‘direct attack’ on the goodwill of the Sunday Tribune.”

According to Gordon, the Irish Mail’s (IMOS) edition posing as the Tribune “included four discount vouchers offering readers the chance to buy the IMOS over the next four weeks at half price and was clearly intended to confuse or deceive people into buying the IMOS believing it to be the Sunday Tribune.”

The lawyer for The Mail’s parent company, Associated Newspapers, Neil Steen, countered and called the Tribune “A dead man walking, if it was even walking,” when the Mail published the wraparound, the Journal reported.

iMediaEthics wrote in February when the Irish Tribune called for the Daily Mail’s owner to be kicked out of Irish newspaper union, the National Newspaper of Ireland.