The High Court has refused Colm Murphy’s application to review or set aside its 2019 judgment dismissing his civil claims against the Law Society of Ireland and Simon Murphy. Mr Justice MacGrath ruled on 26 July 2021 that the alleged errors did not meet the exceptional threshold required to reopen a reasoned judgment.
The 2019 judgment dismissed Mr Murphy’s claims for damages for misfeasance in public office, negligence and defamation. His 2020 application argued that the court had failed to consider evidence and documents properly, including material concerning discovery, data access requests, the Society’s internal communications and the authority for earlier proceedings against him.
The Society denied wrongdoing and opposed reopening the case. It argued that the application sought to relitigate issues already decided, that concerns about discovery should have been raised during the trial, and that the court’s jurisdiction to revisit a judgment was limited and exceptional.
MacGrath said the governing test required a fundamental error affecting the result and causing a denial of justice. He concluded that Murphy had not met that test. The court held that the central finding in the 2019 judgment—that the civil proceedings amounted to an impermissible collateral attack on earlier court orders—had not been shown to involve an error warranting review.
The judge considered complaints about documents and disclosure, including minutes from a 2006 committee meeting, internal memoranda and emails, and material relating to the Society’s section 18 proceedings. He noted that some documents had been produced at trial or were known to Murphy before or during it, and that no application to address alleged discovery failures had been made before judgment. He found no demonstrated disclosure issue that fundamentally affected the 2019 judgment.
The court also considered Murphy’s allegations that the Society or its representatives had misled courts, and his challenge to the earlier judgment’s treatment of an alleged undertaking. The judge said fraud in civil proceedings had to be specifically pleaded and strictly proved; he was not satisfied that the allegations met the required threshold. He also found that the court’s assessment of the undertaking and related evidence did not establish a fundamental error.
The ruling was limited to the application to revisit the civil judgment. The judge expressly said it did not determine Murphy’s separate applications to re-enter the section 18 or strike-off proceedings, or other matters still pending. The court refused the relief sought.