The Court of Appeal declined to decide wider questions about whether a company must always be represented by professional lawyers, after the parties accepted that Martin McCaughey could raise relevant points in plenary proceedings that might otherwise have been reserved to the company.
In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 8 July 2015, Hogan J agreed with Kelly J’s judgment and proposed order. The source does not set out Kelly J’s reasoning or the terms of the order.
The appeal raised potentially difficult questions about the status of the Supreme Court’s decision in Battle v Irish Art Promotions Ltd. Hogan J said the court should not consider those questions at that stage because the plenary proceedings were to be determined first and the wider issues did not need to be decided in the appeal.
Hogan J noted that deciding the issue could require the court to consider access to the courts under Article 34 of the Constitution, fair procedures, the right to form an association under Article 40.6.iii, and possible questions under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. He said those questions should await a case in which it was necessary and appropriate to decide them.
The judgment also limited what the appeal decided about separate s.316 proceedings: those proceedings were not before the Court of Appeal. Hogan J said any question arising there about McCaughey’s entitlement to represent the company would require a fresh adjudication by the High Court.