The High Court has awarded Margaret Madden and members of her family a total of €755,324.24 in damages following the 1999 murder of her husband, Terence Madden, outside their home in Monasteraden, Co Sligo.
In a judgment delivered on 9 October 2012, Ms Justice Irvine found four defendants jointly and severally liable for the legally recoverable losses arising from Mr Madden’s death. The court’s central basis for liability was conspiracy to cause him injury. It did not decide whether defendants other than the man who fired the fatal shots were separately liable in assault or battery, because that question was unnecessary to the outcome.
The judge relied on the Special Criminal Court’s 2000 findings that three defendants had taken part in a common design to cause Mr Madden serious injury. Those defendants were estopped from contesting the conspiracy claim in the civil proceedings. As to the fourth defendant, the judge found on the balance of probabilities that he knowingly supplied the shotgun used in the killing, and was part of the conspiracy. The civil claim still required proof despite some defendants’ absence from the hearing.
The court awarded €550,000 to Mrs Madden for financial dependency and €17,000 to their daughter Clare, who had been in full-time education when her father died. It allowed €17,224.24 in special damages and awarded Mrs Madden €150,000 for nervous shock. The judge accepted evidence that Mrs Madden suffered psychological injury after finding her husband shot outside their home, but said the court could not compensate her under this claim for medical conditions that did not fall within nervous shock. The judge did not attribute her coronary heart disease to the shock.
A statutory solatium award of €25,400 was divided among the widow, the couple’s three children and Mr Madden’s four siblings. The widow and each child received €5,100; each sibling received €1,250.
The judgment’s awards total €755,324.24. The court’s decision addressed civil compensation; it did not revisit the criminal convictions or determine the unresolved assault and battery issue.