The High Court set aside an order renewing Frank Chandler’s personal injuries summons, finding that no “good reason” had been shown for renewal after the summons expired without being served. The decision concerned the renewal order, not the underlying personal injuries claim.
Mr Justice Max Barrett delivered the judgment on 9 December 2019. The case arose from a claim relating to Mr Chandler’s employment with the Irish Naval Service, which began in 1983, and his heart attack on 7 December 2013. The judgment does not determine whether the defendants were liable for his health problems.
Mr Chandler’s solicitor received his medical records in February 2017. On counsel’s advice, proceedings were issued in March 2017 but not served while medico-legal investigations continued. The judge accepted that issuing without serving at that stage was prudent. However, after Mr Chandler received Dr Kurbaan’s report—on one of two dates given in the evidence, September or November 2017—the court found there was no valid reason to delay service. The approximately one-year delay was attributed to solicitor inadvertence, which the judge said was not generally a good reason for renewal.
The summons expired on 12 March 2018. Mr Chandler’s solicitors discovered in September that it had not been served, then applied without notice to renew it. The renewal order was granted on 12 September 2018. The defendants later applied to set that order aside.
The judge considered Supreme Court decisions on when a summons may be renewed. A claim becoming time-barred if brought by a fresh summons was not, by itself, a good reason; early awareness of the intended claim could also matter. But the judge concluded that no good reason had been established in this case. A September 2017 letter to the Minister for Defence did not disclose that proceedings were already in being. The related correspondence effectively stopped in November, when the State Claims Agency sought authority to obtain Mr Chandler’s medical records; that authority remained unprovided by the hearing.
The court also found that the defendants faced prejudice in defending a stale claim concerning events dating back at least nine years. The medical report was not before the court, and the lack of access to the records left the court unable to assess the assertion that the case could be decided on documents alone. The judge acknowledged that it was regrettable the claim had been allowed to expire, but held that the absence of good reason meant the application to set aside the renewal order had to succeed.