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Lay Litigants Win Appeal in Supreme Court
national |
rights, freedoms and repression |
news report
Wednesday July 27, 2016 23:32 by Justin Morahan
Six plenary actions returned to the High Court Kevin and Karen Tracey won an important appeal in the Supreme Court on Tuesday
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7I notice that the link is not working. Apologies.
To access the judgement :
Go to Courts Service of Ireland, click on Judgements and Determinations, click on Judgements by Court, click on Supreme Court arrow, click on 2016 arrow. The judgement is under the title : "7/26/2016) Tracey -v- McDowell, The Minister for Justice Equality & Law Reform and ors"
Fixed that link in the main article for you Justin! It's now working correctly :-)
Also, here's a copy of the working link
Thanks for that Wage Slave.
Here is a link to the background to the case - a Court report on the day when Judge Kearns struck out the six cases that have now been re-instated by the Supreme Court
On re-reading the judgement, it is clear that my report was in error in saying that the Court rejected the allegation of judicial bias. What happened was that the Supreme Court judgement bypassed the allegation and merely commented unfavourably on one aspect of the Appellant's arguments alleging judicial bias, that is the description of Kevin Tracey as "a serial litigant" without any explanation
Another aspect of the allegation of bias was the rejection by the trial judge of Mr Tracey's medical certificates "in a cavalier manner". It was pointed out in Submission that the exact same certificates had been accepted without difficulty by then Judge Peter Charleton (now of the Supreme Court, who was one of the panel of three judges deciding the Supreme Court appeal.
The relevant paragraph of the judgement is 7.12, page 21-22:
"In those circumstances it is unnecessary to consider the other ground put forward on behalf of the Traceys being an allegation of bias on the part of the trial judge. I would merely comment that the mere fact that some of the issues addressed by the trial judge were expressed in a particular way would not, of itself, be sufficient evidence to indicate bias. The description of Mr Tracey as a "serial litigant", while not perhaps an ideal way of putting it, was nonetheless relevant to the point that Mr Tracey's experience of litigation allowed the Court to require a higher standard of compliance from him than might be the case in respect of a litigant who had no litigation experience whatsoever".
The judgement ignored the Case Law of Kyprianou v Cyprus cited by the Appellants in favour of their allegation of the existence of judicial bias.
It's not often that you see quality like this in the Supreme Court. Usually, one sees a single point argued to death with the same argument repeated, over and over.
Not so with this case. The case started out, it seemed, with the lofty intention of bring about a resurrection. A single resurrection. About four or so hours in, one of the judges asked if Justin and Kevin were trying to resurrect a single case or six cases. Kevin replied that it was six cases that were in need of divine intervention. All six had been knocked on the head, by the same gimp, for the same gobshite reason. If one was brought back to life and the other five weren't, it would be a logical obscenity, that even an Irish judge couldn't ignore.
The barristers for Michael McDowell, the Attorney General and the Court's Service, were relegated to talking shit, irrelevant shit. They argued that "serial" when used to describe someone and their actions wasn't necessarily an insult. And they argued that not being able to provide documentary discovery didn't cause delay on their part.
The Court issued a judgement through clenched teeth. Very satisfying. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court, avoided like the plague, acknowledging the elephant in the room: The fact that the inexcusable and inordinate delay that these cases were thrown out for, had yet to happen, when they were binned. Future crime!
A massive well done to Justin and Kevin. Incredible stuff.
The six cases referred to above are now under case management in the High Court with Mr Justice Eager in charge. His opinion is that 2 of the six should be decided before a judge and jury and that he himself should handle the other four.Meanwhile several other cases that had their roots in alleged egregious wrongdoing to Kevin and Karen are coming down the tube. So far the State is not admitting wrongdoing.
The six cases referred to above are now under case management in the High Court with Mr Justice Eager in charge. His opinion is that 2 of the six should be decided before a judge and jury and that he himself should handle the other four.Meanwhile several other cases that had their roots in alleged egregious wrongdoing to Kevin and Karen are coming down the tube. So far the State is not admitting wrongdoing.