The High Court has ordered Denise Lynch to pay the legal costs of the State respondents and the Director of Public Prosecutions after dismissing her judicial review challenge to restrictions on the sale of certain cannabinol derivatives.
The order was made in a supplemental judgment on costs delivered by Mr Justice Garrett Simons on 19 December 2024. The application for judicial review had already been dismissed in July. The costs ruling did not revisit that dismissal; it decided who must bear the costs of the proceedings.
Lynch argued that the case was a “test case” or “lead case” and that costs should not automatically follow the outcome. The court assumed her proceedings had become a lead case after an appeal in an earlier challenge, Bogusas v Minister for Health, was withdrawn. It noted that five other cases raised the same point. But it said lead-case status is a case-management tool and does not itself establish that proceedings qualify for special treatment on costs.
Applying principles set out by the Supreme Court in Little v Chief Appeals Officer, the judge found that the case did not raise an issue of general public importance or clarify an uncertain area of law. The argument concerned whether a cannabinol derivative with a particular chemical composition should count as a narcotic drug for the purposes of EU free movement rules. The judge said the governing legal position had been clear since a proposed amendment to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was rejected in December 2020.
The court also described the case as obviously weak, noting that similar arguments had already been rejected in Bogusas. It gave some weight to the finding that the proceedings’ sole objective was to protect Lynch’s commercial interests. The judge said claims of financial hardship had not been supported by affidavit evidence.
The ruling separately addressed the Director of Public Prosecutions, who had joined the proceedings after a criminal prosecution was initiated against Lynch. The judge said Lynch abandoned, on the day of the hearing, parts of her case that could have affected the prosecution. In the court’s view, earlier notice that no relief was sought against the Director could have avoided significant legal costs, and the Director would have been entitled to costs even if the public-interest criteria had been met.
The court ordered Lynch to pay the legal costs of the State respondents and the Director, including reserved costs and costs of written submissions. The costs are to be adjudicated under Part 10 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 if the parties cannot agree. The order is stayed for 28 days from its perfection, and the stay continues if an appeal or application for leave to appeal is made, until it is determined.