Case Reports

In the Grand Chamber judgment in the case of Ibrahim and Others v. the United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights has held, by 15 votes to two, that there had been no violation of the rights of three applicants (Mr Ibrahim, Mr Mohammed and Mr Omar) under Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (c) (right to

A Darfuri refugee succeeded in his application for an order of certiorari quashing the decision of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, which had affirmed the recommendation of the Refugee Applications Commissioner that he should not be granted refugee status. The High Court found that the Tribunal had fai

In the High Court in Belfast, Justice Maguire refused an application for leave to apply for judicial review of the Government’s “On the Run” scheme. The application for leave was rendered academic due to the outcome of the Hallett Review, and subsequent statements from the Secretary of State f

In the High Court, an asylum-seeker from Pakistan was granted an order of certiorari, quashing the Minister for Justice and Equality’s decision to affirm his deportation order. The Court found that the Minister had failed to take into consideration the likeliness of the applicant facing both tortu

The posting of a hyperlink on a website to works protected by copyright and published without the author’s consent on another website does not constitute a “communication to the public” when the person who posts that link does not seek financial gain and acts without knowledge that those works

A property development company and its guarantor company have failed to prove that they suffered a loss as a result of an omission and alleged encouragement by their former solicitor that resulted in them proceeding with the purchase of land at the height of Northern Ireland’s property boom. In th

The High Court has refused the application of a mother to remove her two children from Ireland, returning them to Australia where they were born and where she is a citizen. Justice O’Hanlon found that the children were habitually resident in Ireland, and that the mother and the father – an Iris

Sitting in Ballymena Court, District Judge Gilpin, dismissed a claim for damages brought by a teenage girl against an MLA, concluding that she had failed to establish liability. The girl sought damages for breach of the statutory tort of harassment under the Protection from Harassment (NI) Order 199

The High Court has refused a man’s application for judicial review in relation to a data protection complaint. In the application, the man sought to challenge the Data Protection Commissioner’s refusal to investigate disputed facts of his data protection complaint via an oral hearing, with the C

The High Court in Belfast has refused an application by the Chief Constable of the PSNI to stay proceedings brought by a solicitor as an abuse of process on the basis that there has been “no real and substantial tort”. The relevant proceedings brought by the solicitor were in relation to a comme

The High Court has refused to remit a summary judgment of more than €6 million to plenary hearing, because the secretary of the company against which the judgment was made could not prove Allied Irish Bank (AIB) had been negligent in failing to provide him with independent legal advice when he sig

The High Court in Belfast has awarded compensation of £50,000 to a former hotelier after defamatory comments were published in the Sunday World newspaper. Justice Stephens held that the newspaper did not meet the standards of responsible journalism in failing to verify sources, and had erroneously

The High Court has refused a dairy farmer’s application for an order setting aside a judgment against him of more than €153,000, on the basis that no reasonable defence had been offered. Justice Baker stated that on the facts of the case, the farmer’s reasons for withholding payment were more

A man who argued that the district judge who had convicted him of driving without insurance had misinterpreted section 56 of the Road Traffic Act 1961 has had his application for judicial review dismissed in the High Court. Dismissing his application, Justice Noonan held that the man was confused as

A local development company in Connemara, County Galway, failed in a High Court challenge to the decision by a state body to award the entirety of a public contract to another applicant – a development programme that in previous years had been divided into two separate contracts. Justice Hedigan s