The High Court has struck out Patrick and Magdalen Towey’s latest claim over a 2019 possession order, finding that the pleaded arguments disclosed no reasonable cause of action and that the proceedings were frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of process.
Mr Justice Dignam delivered the judgment on 11 November 2022. The Toweys did not attend the hearing to pursue their own motions or respond to the defendants’ applications. They had told the defendants they would not attend while they believed there was an ongoing Garda investigation into alleged fraud involving court documents. The judge said no notice of discontinuance had been filed, so the proceedings remained live.
The claim followed Start Mortgages DAC’s possession proceedings concerning the Toweys’ property. In June 2019, Judge Karen Fergus made a possession order in Roscommon Circuit Court. No appeal was brought against that order. The Toweys later issued several sets of proceedings relating to it and to earlier court decisions. Their current claim argued, among other things, that they were immune from court summonses and orders, relying on their interpretation of unrelated cases involving the Minister for Justice, the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions. They also alleged treason by judges and sought €10 million in damages.
The judge said that even taking the facts pleaded as true, they did not support the legal conclusions the Toweys advanced. He held that the claim failed under Order 19, rule 28 of the Rules of the Superior Courts and would also be struck out under the court’s inherent jurisdiction. He further found that it was a collateral attack on earlier orders that had not been appealed, and that amendment or further pre-trial steps could not remedy the defects.
The defendants also sought restrictions requiring the Toweys to obtain leave before bringing certain further proceedings. The judge declined to make the broader order sought by Start Mortgages and its solicitors. He proposed narrower restrictions covering proceedings connected with the 2019 possession order or later proceedings referring to it, against specified state bodies, officials, court personnel, judges and legal representatives, as well as Start Mortgages and Lavelle Partners.
The proposed restrictions were not yet final. The judge directed Start Mortgages’ solicitors to notify each plaintiff of the proposed terms and give them an opportunity to make submissions about those terms. The matter was to return for mention seven days after delivery of the judgment, with a further hearing if needed. The judgment said the restriction would not apply to separate proceedings issued in March 2022, as those had already been commenced.