The High Court has refused an application to quash two search warrants used in an investigation into suspected trade mark offences, finding that the warrants’ mistaken wording did not make them invalid because they also cited the relevant criminal provision.
The application for judicial review was brought by Muhammed Mujahid and Holly Star Limited, whose sole director was Mujahid. It challenged a District Court judge’s decision on 25 May 2016 to issue warrants for Mujahid’s home and the company’s business premises, both in Claremorris, Co Mayo. The warrants were executed the following day.
Sergeant James F Carroll, the respondent, searched both addresses and seized property he reasonably believed was connected to the suspected wrongdoing. Some or all of it was a clothing consignment bought from a supplier in Pakistan. It had entered Ireland on 5 May 2016 and was delivered to the applicants on the day of the searches. Carroll said he sought the warrants after examining the goods and concluding they were counterfeit and infringed the “PACIFIC MERCHANTS” trade mark, which the judgment says was held by Abercrombie & Fitch. A file was being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions. The applicants had not been formally charged at the time of the judgment.
The applicants argued that the warrants wrongly described the suspected offence using language associated with section 14 of the Trade Marks Act 1996, which concerns civil infringement, and did not set out the elements of the separate criminal offence under section 92. They said the District Court judge lacked jurisdiction to issue warrants on the basis of a non-arrestable civil wrong. Carroll accepted that section 14 was referred to in error, but argued that the warrants also cited section 92 and made their legal basis clear.
Justice Stewart said the warrants’ wording drew on section 14, but that the explicit reference to section 92 could not be ignored. The court found the description adequate to identify the suspected arrestable offence and rejected the argument that a warrant must list every element of that offence. It also concluded that the wording did not show the District Court judge had applied the wrong legal test.
The judge said a warrant for a suspected section 14 breach alone could not be issued under the relevant search-warrant power because section 14 does not create an arrestable offence. But the warrants also specified section 92, and the error was not fundamental enough to invalidate them. The applicants’ judicial-review challenge was refused. The judgment records that Mujahid also sought the return of property, but its concluding order is to refuse the reliefs sought.