Case Reports

Court documents should be more readily accessible, an Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union has proposed. Regulation No 1049/2001 obliges the Commission to grant a third party access to the pleadings submitted by a member state, of which it holds a copy, in a case that has a

EU law does not, in principle, prevent a member state from opposing collective redundancies in certain circumstances in the interests of the protection of workers and of employment. However, under such national legislation, which must in that case seek to reconcile and strike a fair balance between,

Discrimination resulting in the denial of a basic education is a sufficiently severe violation of basic human rights so as to amount in law to persecution, the Supreme Court has found. In the circumstances of the particular case involving a Serbian child of Ashkali ethnicity, Mr Justice Clarke found

Ireland must recover the sum of €8 per passenger from airlines benefiting from unlawful state aid because the difference between the lower and normal rates of the Irish air travel tax constitutes unlawful aid which must be recovered regardless of the benefit the airlines actually derived from the

A 39-year-old man given a five-year sentence following his conviction for sexual assault of his younger sister over a period of six years in the 1990s has failed in his challenge to the severity of his sentence in the Court of Appeal. Delivering the judgment, Mr Justice Edwards rejected the argument

EU law precludes national legislation that prescribes general and indiscriminate retention of data except in the fight against serious crime, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled. In Case C-698/15, Mr Tom Watson, Mr Peter Brice and Mr Geoffrey Lewis brought actions challenging the UK

A Commission decision to dismiss a request for review of a market authorisation decision on products containing genetically modified soybeans has been backed by the General Court because the parties making the request failed to refute the Commission’s findings that: 1) there are no significant dif

A woman who tripped on the steps of an air bridge as she disembarked from a flight arriving at Dublin Airport has seen her negligence claim against the Dublin Airport Authority overturned by the Court of Appeal. In the High Court, the trial judge had accepted that the absence of wall signs warning p

The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal brought by Independent TD Ms Joan Collins, who challenged the constitutional basis for €31 billion in promissory notes granted to financial institutions without a Dáil vote. The six-judge court was unanimous in their ruling that the Credit Institutions (

Granting an appeal brought by the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Supreme Court has ordered the retrial of a man who had previously been acquitted of burglary and arson in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. Delivering the unanimous judgment of the four-judge Court, Mr Justice William McKechnie held

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) must re-examine whether the three-dimensional shape corresponding to the product “Kit Kat 4 fingers” may be maintained as an EU trade mark because distinctive character acquired through use of the mark must be shown in all the member states

Extrinsic evidence including affidavits from her family revealed the true intention of a deceased woman was to bequeath her apartment to a relative who had been inadvertently misnamed in her last will and testament, the High Court has held. Three residuary legatees challenged the admission of the ex

A woman evicted by her local council on foot of an unlawful warrant is entitled to damages, the Supreme Court has held. In the joint judgment of Justice Clarke, Justice Laffoy and Justice O’Malley, the Court declared that the decision of the High Court judge to withhold relief despite a finding of

The Court of Appeal has dismissed a couple’s challenge to the validity of a guarantee in regards to which the High Court granted Ulsterbank a summary judgment for €126,000. Mr Justice George Birmingham, with whom Mr Justice Michael Peart agreed, found that neither the husband or wife had an argu

The Court of Appeal has dismissed a claim brought by a woman who fell down the stairs of a double decker operated by Dublin Bus. Delivering the finding of the three-judge Court, Mr Justice Michael Peart found that the woman was “the author of her own misfortune” by letting go of the handrail bef