The Supreme Court has allowed an appeal by a monument seller, ruling that the Dublin Cemeteries Committee lacked power under its governing Act to manufacture and sell headstones commercially or establish subsidiaries for that purpose.
In a judgment delivered by Mr Justice Kearns on 30 July 2009, the court held that the Dublin Cemeteries Committee Act 1970 limited the committee to its stated purposes: maintaining existing cemeteries and acquiring and developing new burial grounds. The court said the powers in the Act had to be read in support of those purposes, rather than as independent authority to run a commercial business.
The appellant, David Pierce, trading as Swords Memorials and Andrew Pierce Monuments, had made and sold monuments since 1988. The judgment said the committee’s headstone sales had severely affected Pierce and other businesses competing in the Dublin area. It described the committee’s cemetery displays, sales employee and access to families’ contact details as advantages in marketing headstones. Those circumstances were background to the statutory issue before the court.
The committee’s 1970 Act authorises it to build, construct, improve and maintain monuments and headstones, and to sell or otherwise deal with its undertaking property. The respondents argued that the authority to sell headstones implied a right to develop a business selling them. Justice Kearns drew a distinction between selling property and carrying on a business in a particular product.
The judgment also noted that the committee’s published notice before the 1970 Act did not state an intention to sell headstones commercially. It treated the legislation as a private Act, whose powers had to be read strictly against its promoters where their scope was uncertain. The judgment further referred to the Act’s requirement that the committee’s income and property be applied solely to its stated objects.
The court concluded that commercial manufacture and retail of headstones were outside the committee’s statutory powers and allowed the appeal. The judgment does not specify a further remedy or set out a separate order requiring the committee to take a particular step. A separate judgment by Justice Macken, delivered on 28 May 2009, had addressed whether an adequate competition-law remedy was available to Pierce; Justice Kearns said the court had already concluded that it was not.