The Supreme Court has upheld an order preventing former Creative Labs employee Maurice Kiely from bringing further legal proceedings against the company or former co-worker Szilvia Benkovszka without first obtaining permission from the High Court.
Ms Justice Denham dismissed Kiely's appeal from an October 2001 High Court ruling which struck out his proceedings as vexatious and an abuse of the court process.
Kiely worked for Creative Labs (Ireland) Limited during two periods between 1997 and 1999. He was dismissed on September 6, 1999. A subsequent unfair dismissal claim before the Employment Appeals Tribunal failed because he did not have the required 12 months' service. The Labour Court later recommended that he accept he had not been unfairly dismissed.
In February 2000, members of Creative Labs management formed the view that the company should make a complaint to gardaí about harassment which they believed Kiely had directed at Benkovszka. The Supreme Court judgment does not determine whether that alleged harassment occurred.
Kiely then pursued slander proceedings. After an initial District Court case was withdrawn, he brought Circuit Court proceedings against Creative Labs and Benkovszka. In May 2000, the Circuit Court granted injunctions restricting communications by Kiely and struck out his proceedings as an abuse of process. He did not appeal that order.
Instead, Kiely issued similar proceedings in the High Court in August 2000, alleging that he had been falsely accused of a crime and that his reputation had been damaged. Those proceedings were struck out in October 2001, and the High Court also restrained him from beginning further cases against the defendants without leave.
The Supreme Court held that his three grounds of appeal were unsustainable. It said that once the Circuit Court had struck out the earlier proceedings as an abuse of process, commencing similar litigation in another court rather than appealing was itself capable of amounting to a further abuse.
The appeal was dismissed and the restriction on future proceedings was affirmed.