A small number of people are taking up a disproportionate amount of court time and “making a mockery” of the judicial system and taxpayer-funded resources, a High Court judge has said.
Mr Justice Michael Twomey said some people relentlessly pursuing “hopeless and vexatious claims” are using the courts not to administer justice but to “inflict injustice on innocent parties” by causing them to spend on legal costs they will never recover.
A common denominator in nearly all of the cases involving such litigants, who usually do not have their own lawyers, is they do not end up paying the legal costs of their opponents because they either do not have the funds or their opponents cannot get payments from them, the judge said.
These individuals have “nothing to lose”, he said, adding that the threat of having to pay an opponent’s legal costs is the “only effective disincentive” to them taking vexatious claims.
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Such applications would come to a “shuddering halt” if they had to pay some money upfront into court as “security” for their opponent’s legal costs, he said. Such a system already applies to corporate litigants.
Mr Justice Twomey made the comments in a judgment dismissing the “latest hopeless and vexatious application” brought by brothers Brian, Kenneth and Maurice McDonagh.
More than two years ago the Court of Appeal dismissed the McDonaghs’ appeal of a High Court decision to grant judgment of €22 million against them over their failure to repay a 2007 loan to buy lands in Kilpedder, Co Wicklow, where they intended to build a data centre.
Ulster Bank and two receivers it appointed over the lands sued Brian, of Dromin House, Dromin East, Delgany, Co Wicklow, and Kenneth and Maurice McDonagh, both of Charleston Road, Ranelagh, Dublin.
Last January the High Court made an order against the McDonaghs restricting their right to issue further proceedings against Ulster Bank over the Kilpedder site.
In his judgment given on Wednesday, Mr Justice Twomey said the January restriction order “has not stopped” the McDonaghs, who are “so much in debt” that orders for them to pay their opponent’s legal costs are “meaningless”.
Lawyers for Ulster Bank told the court there is no prospect of the lender recovering its legal costs spent on getting the McDonaghs’ application dismissed.
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