The High Court has dismissed Dermot Carter’s action over alleged prison conditions in Mountjoy and Cork prisons in the 1990s, finding that inordinate and inexcusable delay had prejudiced the defendants and that a fair trial could not be held.
In a judgment delivered on 7 November 2018, Mr Justice Allen ruled on the defendants’ application to dismiss the proceedings for delay. The court did not decide the separate question of whether the action was statute barred, or the other preliminary issues proposed by the parties.
Carter claimed damages and declarations concerning conditions in which he said he was held between 1993 and 1995. He alleged that in Mountjoy he was kept in a single cell with a bed, locker and pot, and that in Cork he shared a cell with five other inmates, with no lockers and several pots. He said the conditions breached his human and constitutional rights and caused psychological and psychiatric injury.
The defendants disputed the dates and places of his imprisonment. Their pleaded account included a transfer from Mountjoy to Shelton Abbey in January 1994 and temporary release in March that year. They also pleaded later periods of imprisonment. The judge said the timing and location of detention were material, particularly because the alleged conditions differed between the prisons.
The defendants sought dismissal, arguing that the delay had gravely prejudiced their ability to defend the claim. The action began with a plenary summons in September 2006, about 12 years after the alleged events. A statement of claim followed in May 2009 and a full defence in July 2010. The judge noted that Carter took no further step for almost four years, until a discovery request in April 2014.
Carter argued that heroin addiction had left him unable to advance the case. He said he had abused heroin from the early 1990s until October 2015. The judge found that the evidence did not establish incapacity, noting there was no evidence that his solicitors had been unable to obtain instructions. The judge also considered letters sent by the solicitors to prison governors in February 2010 seeking records, including confirmation from Cork Prison that it had no record of Carter’s imprisonment there in 1994.
The judge found that evidence about prison regimes, the alleged effects on Carter and his medical history would depend substantially on oral testimony many years after the events. He said the action had effectively gone nowhere since 2010 and was far from ready for trial.
The court dismissed the action because the delay was inordinate and inexcusable and the resulting prejudice meant the balance of justice required dismissal. The judgment did not determine whether the alleged prison conditions occurred or whether they violated Carter’s rights.