The High Court dismissed a third application seeking an inquiry into Dr Stephen Manning’s detention, ruling that a further application could not proceed while an earlier application concerning the same detention remained under consideration by another judge.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys delivered the ex tempore judgment on 17 May 2017. The application was brought in Manning’s name by Ms Marguerite Corbett and Ms Noriko Manning under Article 40.4 of the Constitution. The judge said Manning was serving a two-month sentence imposed by the Circuit Court on appeal for a public order offence.
The court had already received two other applications relating to that custody. An application brought by Ben Gilroy on Manning’s behalf had been refused by Mr Justice Noonan on 8 May; no appeal had been brought. Manning’s own application, filed on 16 May, had been assigned to Mr Justice Binchy and was still under consideration when the present case came before Humphreys. The judge said the present application was the third arising from the same detention.
Humphreys said successive Article 40 applications may be possible where they rely on different grounds or new evidence. But he distinguished that situation from one where an earlier application about the same detention has not yet been determined. Citing the principle described in a 1987 newspaper report and later legal commentary, he concluded that the court could not examine whether to order an inquiry on the further application while the earlier complaint was being investigated. He dismissed the application on that preliminary procedural ground; he did not determine whether the detention was lawful.
In a postscript, the judge recorded that Corbett asked whether he would accept financial responsibility for economic loss to the family resulting from the detention. He described the question as contemptuous, but said Corbett withdrew it after the judgment. He also commended her courteous submissions and said they were motivated by humanitarian concern for Manning and his family.