The Court of Appeal has allowed Dona Sfar’s appeal against an order restricting her ability to bring proceedings and sent the application back to the High Court for rehearing.
In a judgment delivered on 28 February 2020, Mr Justice McCarthy said the High Court had breached constitutional justice by extending the proposed restrictions without first hearing from Sfar on that wider relief.
The original order, made by Mr Justice Twomey on 30 May 2017, required Sfar to obtain prior leave from the President of the High Court or a nominated judge before bringing proceedings in any jurisdiction against the Minister for Agriculture, the Attorney General and Ireland. A further order on 6 July 2017 extended the restriction to proceedings against judges of the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, High Court, Circuit Court or District Court, as well as the Director of Public Prosecutions and any Government Minister.
The application followed a motion by the respondents seeking an Isaac Wunder order. An affidavit supporting that motion described disputes involving animal welfare and previous dealings with public authorities. The judgment records that Sfar’s associated substantive proceedings challenged, among other matters, the seizure of animals from her lands in County Louth under the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013. A 2016 High Court judgment had said those proceedings amounted to repeated challenges to a welfare notice and “verge[d] on an abuse of process”. Those were prior assessments in the associated proceedings, not the issue decided in this appeal.
The Court of Appeal focused on how the 2017 restriction was made. The respondents’ motion sought restrictions concerning specified respondents, but the perfected order went further. McCarthy J said he had been told there was no reference at the hearing to the possibility of the wider restriction. Sfar therefore came to meet the application as framed, only to find the judgment imposed additional limits on her rights without an opportunity to address them.
The court said a judge considering broader relief should hear both parties, and, if judgment had been reserved, list the matter for a further hearing. It allowed the appeal and remitted the application to the High Court for rehearing. The Court of Appeal did not determine the merits of Sfar’s first five grounds of appeal, saying they did not need to be addressed given its decision on the fair-hearing issue. The rehearing will address the application; the appeal judgment did not itself decide whether an Isaac Wunder order should ultimately be made.