The High Court dismissed Mary Kieran’s damages claim against Ireland, the Attorney General, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and inspector Lyndon McCann over a report on Bula Resources, finding the proceedings were brought too late and disclosed no reasonable cause of action.
In a judgment delivered on 12 April 2018, Mr Justice Meenan said the report was delivered to the Minister in or about July 1998 and published in September 1998. Kieran issued plenary proceedings in February 2016, claiming damages including for fraudulent misrepresentation, malicious falsehood and defamation. She alleged, among other things, that the Minister failed to exercise independent judgment and that the defendants misrepresented the Salymskoye oil field as a “dud”.
The defendants applied to dismiss the proceedings on several grounds, including that they were out of time, an abuse of process and that a fair trial was no longer possible. Kieran did not attend the hearing on 20 March 2018. She had asked for an adjournment, citing “unforeseen circumstances” and later saying she was “not in top form at present”; the judge said she had given no reasons for the court to grant it. The parties’ pleadings and affidavits were opened to the court.
The judge said the evidence before him showed Kieran knew the report’s contents and disputed some of its findings no later than 2005. He found that the proceedings, started about 17 and a half years after publication, were outside the judicial review time limit and the limitation period for the pleaded claims. He rejected Kieran’s assertion that there was no time limit for fraud, noting that the statutory provision she relied on required facts showing when fraud was discovered, or could reasonably have been discovered, and that she had not set out such facts.
The court also found that a fair trial was no longer possible in the claim against McCann. The judgment said he had destroyed files, interview tapes and electronic records before the proceedings began, and Kieran knew of the destruction. The judge noted that the report itself did not describe the oil field as a “dud”, contrary to Kieran’s position that the alleged representation could be assessed from the report alone.
Separately, the judge said he could not see how the Minister’s appointment of an inspector under section 14 of the Companies Act 1990 gave rise to the fiduciary duty alleged. He also concluded that Kieran had not established a basis for fraudulent misrepresentation under the legal test set out in the judgment.
The court ordered dismissal of the claim on the grounds that it was out of time, a fair trial was no longer possible, and the statement of claim disclosed no reasonable cause of action. The judgment does not determine the underlying allegations after a trial.