The High Court has refused Michael O’Mahony’s application for an interlocutory injunction that would have prevented his dismissal and required continued salary payments pending trial of his action against Examiner Publications (Cork) Limited and two related companies.
In a judgment delivered on 5 November 2010, Miss Justice Laffoy said O’Mahony had not established the strong evidential basis required for mandatory interim relief. The ruling did not determine the underlying contractual dispute or whether the proposed redundancy was genuine.
O’Mahony began working for Examiner in 1980 and later became Training Manager. The defendants said he transferred to Thomas Crosbie Printers Limited in 2001, while O’Mahony disputed that he was employed by Printers. The judge said the affidavit evidence was insufficient to resolve who his employer had been since 2004, but found he had not made out a strong case that he was likely to prove he was not a Printers employee at trial.
The central dispute concerned a 2008 conversation with then group managing director Anthony Dinan. O’Mahony said that, when he agreed to move to accounts and payroll duties as training work reduced, Dinan assured him he would be redeployed to Examiner if the new role did not work out. The defendants denied that any contractual redeployment term had been agreed. The judge described the affidavit evidence on key issues as containing “gargantuan conflicts” and said the interim hearing was not the place to resolve such conflicts.
In August 2010, O’Mahony was told his Group Training Manager position was redundant. A letter said his employment would end on 22 October, and an attached redundancy form named Printers as his employer. The defendants attributed the redundancy to financial constraints and the disappearance of training work. O’Mahony argued that the redundancy was not genuine because, he said, the role had ceased to exist in 2008.
The judge held that any claim for redress if the redundancy was in reality an unfair dismissal had to be pursued through the statutory process, beginning before a Rights Commissioner or the Employment Appeals Tribunal. The High Court would not grant interim relief where that was the only issue requiring redress through another forum.
On O’Mahony’s primary contractual argument, the judge applied the “strong case” test for mandatory relief and concluded that his account showed assertions of an agreement but not a strong evidential basis for it. The injunction application was therefore refused. The court said it would facilitate an early hearing of the substantive action and indicated that the defendants should consent to proposed amendments to the summons if O’Mahony continued with the case.