The High Court has sent a jurisdiction application in a solicitor negligence and breach of contract case to a plenary hearing, saying oral evidence is needed to resolve a dispute over what the client instructed his solicitors to do.
The case concerns a knee injury the plaintiff says he suffered during a soccer match between Abercorn Bar and Don Boses in the Malin Head Cup on 16 June 2000. He considered the tackle by an opposing player to have been a deliberate assault.
The plaintiff’s account is that he consulted the defendants in August 2000 and instructed them to bring proceedings in Ireland against the player and the owners of the football ground. He says the solicitors later assured him that proceedings had been issued and were awaiting a hearing. In March 2008, he says, the Courts Service told him no High Court proceedings had been started.
The first named defendant accepts that the plaintiff consulted him about the injury but gives a different account. He says they discussed possible options, including a claim against the organisation that arranged the match, and that counsel advised there was no prospect of a successful claim against it. He says the plaintiff was advised to report the injury to gardaí, but that no criminal proceedings followed. The defendants say they considered a claim against the alleged assailant unlikely to yield compensation because he was unemployed and lived in Northern Ireland, and that the plaintiff had no legal aid. They deny receiving instructions to issue proceedings in Ireland.
The defendants sought an order declining jurisdiction, arguing that they and the plaintiff were domiciled in Northern Ireland and that any advice was given and received there. The plaintiff relied, among other grounds, on Article 5.1 of Regulation 44/2001, which provides for jurisdiction in contract matters in the courts where the relevant services were or should have been provided.
Mr Justice Barr said the conflicting accounts about the contract could not be resolved on affidavit. The parties themselves would need to give oral evidence. If the defendants’ account is accepted, the court indicated no part of the contract appears to have been performed in Ireland and it would lack jurisdiction. If the plaintiff’s account is accepted, the court indicated it would appear to have jurisdiction under the regulation.
The judge made no finding on the delay issue or the plaintiff’s preliminary objection to the provisions used for the application. He directed the plaintiff and first named defendant to file affidavits within four weeks, remitted the application for plenary hearing, and reserved the application’s costs to the judge hearing the renewed application. The judgment did not decide whether the High Court has jurisdiction over the underlying claim.