The High Court has ordered extensive document disclosure in two linked cases arising from the 2019 fire at Douglas Village Shopping Centre in Cork, while leaving final orders to be settled after the parties address outstanding issues.
Mr Justice Twomey’s 26 January 2022 judgment concerns four discovery applications in proceedings being managed and heard together. One case was brought by the shopping centre’s owner and operator; the other by retail tenants. Liability is to be considered first, with any assessment of damages left for a later stage.
The fire began on 31 August 2019 in a 2006 Opel Zafira B parked in the centre’s multi-storey car park. The judgment records competing allegations about its cause and spread. The owners allege defects in the vehicle’s heating and ventilation system and failings in the manufacturers’ and distributors’ recalls. The car defendants deny those allegations and say the owners’ fire-safety arrangements, including the absence of sprinklers, contributed to the fire’s spread. They also allege negligence by the driver. These issues had not been decided in this discovery judgment.
In the owners’ application against the car defendants, the court ordered discovery of material including internal investigation records, recall-related communications and documents concerning fires involving Zafira B vehicles. It allowed discovery to cover left-hand-drive models as well as right-hand-drive models, but rejected a request to extend certain technical material beyond vehicles manufactured in 2006. The court also ordered documents concerning the defendants’ investigations into the fire, while making no determination about the admissibility or weight of the material.
In the manufacturer’s application against the owners, the court ordered extensive records on the centre’s fire safety, including documents about the post-fire reconstruction. It set 11 March 2021 as a general cut-off for the creation of documents in specified categories. The judgment highlighted the parties’ dispute over information about repairs to the car’s coolant system on the eve of the fire, but made no finding of liability.
The manufacturer’s application against the tenants was granted in part. The court ordered, among other things, certain insurance correspondence, fire-safety information and factual records about inspections or investigations, with expert interpretation excluded from one category. It refused requests for documents about alleged vehicle defects and the driver’s conduct, and declined to require tenants to produce records more appropriately sought from the owners.
The distributors’ application against the driver was also granted in part. The court ordered disclosure of relevant documents within the driver’s possession, power or procurement, including documents previously in her possession. It refused to extend that order to documents held by her insurer, AIG, because the court rules did not permit that step on this application. A separate application for non-party discovery was not before the court. The court ordered discovery of specified records concerning when the driver began and ceased receiving mail at two addresses.
The judgment provisionally listed the case for mention one week later so the parties could try to resolve outstanding issues before final orders were made.