Our firm has successfully secured the dismissal of High Court Proceedings for want of prosecution on the basis of inordinate and inexcusable delay.
Our firm brought the application on behalf of our client, to have the plaintiff’s proceedings dismissed for want of prosecution in circumstances where due to the passage of time, our client would have been prejudiced in defending the proceedings.
The Plaintiff issued Proceedings back in 2014 with the Defence having been delivered on 2015, after which no steps were taken by the Plaintiff to prosecute the claim for specific lengthy periods of time. The inaction on the Plaintiff’s part, which began in January 2016, continued unabated throughout the entire of 2020, having a serious impact on the witnesses’ ability to give meaningful assistance or even act as a witness, whereby ultimately it would not be possible to have a fair trial.
Mr. Justice Heslin found that the Plaintiff’s failure to prosecute proceedings provides grounds to dismiss the claim for want of prosecution making specific reference to well-established case law on the subject including O’Domhnaill v. Merrick and Primor Plc. v Stokes Kennedy Crowley and the more recent cases of Framus Ltd. v. CRH plc and Cave Projects Limited v. Gilhooley & Ors.
Key factors which are considered by the court in these applications include:
- delays prior to issuing proceedings
- Whether the delay in prosecution was inordinate and inexcusable
- whether the balance of justice is in favour of the case proceeding or not
- whether the defendant was guilty of delay and acquiesced in the delay
- even if there is not culpable delay whether due to the passage of time a fair trial is no longer possible
A link to the Judgment can be found here.