The High Court refused Joseph Lavery’s application to stay his Circuit Court trial on a charge of assaulting a member of An Garda Síochána. The application was made on the afternoon of 3 March 2020, the day before the trial was due to begin.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said Lavery had first tried to make the application before Mr Justice Meenan in judicial review proceedings, but did so after Meenan J. had risen. He then applied to Humphreys J.
The judge gave several reasons for refusing the stay. Lavery had previously been directed to bring an application on notice, so the judge said there would need to be exceptional circumstances to consider another application without notice. The stay application also had no procedural connection to the judicial review proceedings in which it was made, which the judge said had ended. Separate intended judicial reviews had not yet received leave to issue.
The judge also found that no basis for a stay had been shown. There was no affidavit specifically grounding the stay application, and the affidavit for the intended action disclosed no arguable grounds, he said. It included claims that Lavery was immune from court orders and summonses, and alleged that the Director of Public Prosecutions was in contempt in separate proceedings from 2016. The judge said those allegations had no demonstrated legal basis and were irrelevant to the application. Lavery’s submission that he was not guilty was a defence point, rather than a basis for judicial review or a stay, the judge said.
Humphreys J. further held that the timing of the application—the late afternoon before trial—would itself disqualify it, even if there had otherwise been a basis for relief. He refused the stay and said the application further reinforced the case for the Isaac Wunder order previously made against Lavery.
The judgment did not determine the assault charge. The trial was due to begin on 4 March 2020; the order addressed only Lavery’s application for a stay.