The Court of Appeal allowed Ciarán Culkin’s appeal against a High Court decision striking out his personal-injury proceedings against Sligo County Council. It held that the proceedings could not be barred automatically because he had earlier brought an employment equality complaint based on overlapping events. The court did not decide whether his personal-injury claim would succeed.
Mr Culkin, a retired engineer, worked for the Council for 39 years. He alleged that, from around 1996, he was bullied, isolated and victimised at work, and that the treatment caused psychological and physical symptoms. He retired in May 2009 and referred an employment equality complaint to the Equality Tribunal in September that year. He also pursued a personal-injury claim: the judgment records that he obtained authorisation from the Personal Injuries Assessment Board in November 2010 and that his personal-injury summons issued in February 2011.
The Tribunal heard his complaint on five dates between July 2012 and July 2014. The High Court later struck out the personal-injury proceedings as an abuse of process, finding that pursuing both routes over the same alleged events breached the rule against relitigating matters that could have been raised earlier. Mr Culkin appealed.
Giving judgment on 29 March 2017, Mr Justice Gerard Hogan said the Henderson v Henderson rule was not automatic. The claims involved different legal rights, remedies and time limits. The Equality Tribunal could not hear a common-law personal-injury claim, just as the High Court did not have first-instance jurisdiction over the statutory discrimination claim. Mr Culkin therefore could not have brought his whole case in one set of proceedings.
The court also interpreted section 101 of the Employment Equality Act 1998 in context. It said the provision did not generally prevent a later personal-injury claim simply because an earlier discrimination complaint had failed. Its bar on common-law damages applied to claims concerning failure to comply with an equal-remuneration term or equality clause.
The appeal was allowed to the extent that the personal-injury claim could not be struck out at the outset on those grounds. The Court of Appeal did not determine the merits of the personal-injury claim or order that it proceed without qualification. It said the trial court could still find that the claim, or parts of it, amounted in substance to a collateral attack on the Equality Tribunal’s decision and should fail on that basis.