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Riordan v. An Taoiseach [2000] IESC 61 (29th June, 2000)

THE SUPREME COURT

SUPREME COURT RECORD NO. 108/99

McGuinness J.

Murray J.

Geoghegan J.

BETWEEN:

DENIS RIORDAN

APPLICANT

AND

AN TAOISEACH BERTIE AHERN, TÁNAISTE MARY HARNEY, GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND, OIREACHTAS NA hÉIREANN, SEANAD ÉIREANN, DÁIL ÉIREANN, ATTORNEY GENERAL DAVID BYRNE S.C., IRELAND

RESPONDENTS

THE SUPREME COURT

SUPREME COURT RECORD NO. 381/97

BETWEEN:

DENIS RIORDAN

APPLICANT

AND

AN TAOISEACH JOHN BRUTON, TÁNAISTE DICK SPRING, GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL DERMOT GLEESON

RESPONDENTS

Ex-Tempore Judgment delivered the 29th day of June, 2000 by Murray J.

1. There are four Motions before the Court, two of which concern certain reliefs sought by the Applicant Mr Riordan in respect of judgments of the Supreme Court already handed down in the above entitled proceedings in which he was the Applicant/Appellant against the Respondents. Another Motion brought by Mr Riordan concerns discovery in relation to those two Motions. The fourth Motion is that brought by the Respondents seeking to have the Motions brought by Mr Riordan struck out on the grounds that they constitute an abuse of the

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process of the Court. I will briefly refer to the previous proceedings. One of the proceedings with which the Motion concerns are those with the record no. 108/99 which were issued on the 12th March, 1999 and came on for hearing before Mr Justice O’Sullivan in the High Court on the 25th March, 1999. These proceedings were stayed by Mr Justice O’Sullivan on the grounds that there was an abuse of the process of the Courts, That ruling was appealed by the Applicant to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court dismissed his appeal on 26th June, 1999. The proceedings no. 381/97 were issued on the 2nd May, 1997. The judgment of the High Court was delivered by Mr Justice Costello on the 14th November, 1997. The Appellant appealed the said judgment and Order to this Court, and this Court, delivered its judgment on the 19th November, 1998 dismissing the appeal.

2. I do not consider it necessary to detail here the nature of those proceedings. Suffice to say that it is quite clear that the Applicant, Mr Riordan, was dissatisfied with the result and takes issue with the reasoning of the Court in each of those judgments. It was this sense of dissatisfaction which, notwithstanding an Order preventing him from issuing fresh proceedings against the same Respondents, lead him to bring the Motions referred to above in these proceedings against those Respondents. The reliefs sought in these motions in effect ultimately seek to set-aside the judgments which he considers to be fundamentally wrong.

3. The essence of Mr Riordan’s case is that the judgments and Orders of the Supreme Court were fundamentally flawed by major errors in the application of the law and the interpretation of the Constitution. At least one of the errors, Mr Riordan contends constituted a repudiation of the Constitution. He wishes as he put it, “to prove these errors”. He contends in the present proceedings that the judges were corrupt in rendering corrupt

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judgments. They acted with mala fides. He bases these contentions solely on what he describes as the magnitude of the errors from which they can be deduced. In short, apart from one element which I will refer to later, Mr Riordan essentially says that the Supreme Court was in error in the judgments which it rendered in those two cases which should therefore be set-aside so that he may argue once again certain points which were in issue in those cases.

4. The Respondents for their part contend that Mr Riordan has raised all these issues in the High Court and in particular in the Supreme Court and thus availed of and exhausted all his judicial remedies. The Respondents contend that there is no legal basis for reopening proceedings which are now terminated or for revisiting those issues by way of motion in the same proceedings.

5. It is well established that the Courts have an inherent jurisdiction to stay proceedings to prevent an abuse of the process of the Court. As Mr Justice Costello pointed out in Barry -v- Buckley [1981] IR 306

“Basically [the Court’s] jurisdiction exists to ensure that an abuse of the process of the Court does not take place so if the proceedings are frivolous or vexation they will be stayed. They will also be stayed if it is clear that the Plaintiff’s case must fail. ... The jurisdiction should be exercised sparingly and only in clear cases.”

6. I would also add that it is a jurisdiction which must be exercised, particularly in the context of a case such as this, in taking all of the arguments at their face value. That is to say even if Mr Riordan’s arguments as to errors in the judgments were to be considered correct the question still remains is he entitled to maintain them in these proceedings brought by way of Motions and has this Court jurisdiction to retry them. The alleged errors in the judgments of the Supreme Court of which Mr Riordan speaks all concern matters which arose and were dealt

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with by the Court in those cases. That is after all what his applications here today are about. These were the justiciable issues between the parties in the original proceedings before the Supreme Court, the Court of final appeal in this jurisdiction. Those proceedings are at an end and are binding on the parties to them. This is so even if a party may not only be dissatisfied with the results but even if it chooses to disagree fundamentally with a reasoning in the judgments or the interpretation given to the law.

Article 34.4.6. of the Constitution of Ireland provides that “The decision of the Supreme Court shall in all cases be final and conclusive.” This article does no more than consecrate in the Constitution a general principle of law to be found in most democratic legal systems namely that there must be an ultimate finality to litigation and to that end the judgments of Courts of last instance, in principle, finally and conclusively determine the issues between the parties. If a party, solely because he or she disagreed with a judgment of the Court of final appeal could by one means or another restart the proceedings to have issues tried all over again, and perhaps even again, it would undermine the functioning of the administration of justice and weaken the authority of the law, which are there for the benefit, not of the Courts, but of citizens as a whole. In my view, the Plaintiff is not entitled to raise again the issues which he has for the purpose of ultimately setting aside the full and binding effects of the judgments already handed down by this Court in the cases in question and this Court does not, on the grounds advanced by Mr Riordan, have any further jurisdiction to retry those issues.

7. In a further argument Mr Riordan adverted to the fact that Mr Justice Barron had presided in a case in which he had granted a divorce after the amendment to the Constitution

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in that regard had been adopted and that he had at one point refused an ex-parte application brought by him for leave to challenge the constitutionality of the Act implementing the amendment. He also mentioned that the former Chief Justice, Mr Justice Hamilton, had sat as Chairman of a tribunal and part of the previous proceedings included a challenge to the legality of certain appointments, namely of Mr Justice McCracken, Mr Justice Moriarty and Mr Justice Flood, as Chairmen of tribunals. All this he contends meant that the two judges in question had an interest in the proceedings which rendered them incapable of giving an impartial judgment or decision.

8. Judges must exercise their judicial functions in accordance with the law and the Constitution in force at any given time and the fact that they have administered a law or exercised their functions in one case or another does not preclude them from determining the constitutionality of that law in another. There is no personal interest involved. Apart from mere assertion, no rationale has been advanced in support of contention and I consider that the contention of a prejudicial interest is not rational, manifestly ill-founded and bound to fail.

9. For all the foregoing reasons I am of the view that the Motions before the Court concerning the previous judgments of this Court and the reliefs sought therein are clearly bound to fail and for this reason I would stay those proceedings as constituting an abuse of the process of the Court.

10. The Motion concerning discovery becomes, in these circumstances, devoid of any purpose and should be struck-out. Having regard to the previous Orders made by the Court in

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connection with the issuing of fresh proceedings by Mr Riordan without leave of the Court and having regard to the fact that these Motions concern the same Respondents but in the same proceedings, I am of the view that it would be appropriate for the Court to order that no further Motion or other proceedings should be taken in these proceedings or concerning these proceedings without leave of this Court.

11. Costs should be awarded to the Respondents.