The High Court has dismissed the remaining claims brought by environmental engineering consultant John James Mungovan against Clare County Council over its register of wastewater treatment site assessors.
In a judgment delivered on 11 May 2018, Ms Justice Costello refused an adjournment sought on the hearing date to allow Mr Mungovan to pursue a possible application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. The judge said the application had not been made and that the request was raised for the first time on the day of the hearing, after four months without steps being taken towards an appeal.
The case concerned a register the council maintained from November 2004 to March 2013. Planning applications involving septic tanks or other on-site wastewater treatment systems had to include specified site suitability tests, which the council required to be carried out by people on the register. Mr Mungovan applied for inclusion, but the council declined to recommend him for the panel after considering his applications and reports.
His proceedings, issued in 2011, sought declarations that the register was unlawful and damages, including for alleged malicious falsehood. In an earlier modular hearing, the High Court ruled that his public law claims for declarations were out of time. The Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal in December 2017 and affirmed the order that those claims, along with a related economic-loss damages claim, were time-barred.
The current motion concerned the remaining claims. The judge held that the earlier decisions prevented Mr Mungovan from challenging the lawfulness of the register. She also found that his malicious falsehood claim was bound to fail: the pleaded circular did not itself refer to him, and his argument that it was false and malicious depended on alleging that the council lacked authority to operate the register.
The court dismissed the claims for declarations and the related economic-loss damages claim as unsustainable following the Court of Appeal decision. It struck out the remaining claims for malicious falsehood and interest, finding them bound to fail. The ruling resolved the claims before the court; it did not decide whether Mr Mungovan was professionally suitable for the register.