The High Court awarded the Eustace family €65,000 in compensatory damages and €12,000 in aggravated damages after finding that Drogheda Borough Council’s road and sewer works trespassed on their land for nine years. The court did not find that the separate tort of misfeasance in public office had been proved.
The judgment by Ms Justice Ní Raifeartaigh, delivered on 29 March 2019, concerned land at the junction of Donore Road and St John’s Road in Drogheda. The Council admitted the trespass by the time of the hearing. The judge found it covered both construction of a slip road and the laying of a sewer connection serving the Haymarket development, and lasted from 2001 until a notice to treat was served in 2010.
The family’s claim for misfeasance centred on whether Council officials knowingly or recklessly authorised the works despite the family’s title claims. The judge said the Council’s conduct was “deeply disrespectful” of the family’s property rights and “bewilderingly incompetent”, and found it grossly negligent. But she was not satisfied that the evidence identified an individual officer who both had authority to allow the developer onto the land and knew of the family’s claim to it. The misfeasance claim therefore failed, and the Council was not held vicariously liable for that tort.
The judgment recounts that the family had told the Council in 1991 that Mrs Eustace owned the land. When construction began in 2001, the family and their solicitors repeatedly objected. In January 2002, they sent the Council a copy of a 1964 deed. The judge said the Council could have promptly checked the title with its own law agents, but works continued until they were complete. The Council later accepted the family’s freehold title in correspondence in March 2002.
For damages, the judge considered the land’s commercial value and the long duration of the trespass, while also noting that the family did not use it and that it was not beside their home. She found the Council’s handling of the dispute oppressive, arrogant or outrageous for the purposes of aggravated damages. The family had experienced considerable distress and inconvenience; the judge also noted that the matter was not resolved during Mrs Eustace’s lifetime.
The judgment records that the purchase price following the 2010 compulsory acquisition was reached in arbitration in 2018. The damages awarded in this case were for the trespass and the way it was handled.