The Court of Appeal has refused Piotr Skoczylas’s application to reopen its decision striking out proceedings against the State, and confirmed that the proceedings stand struck out. The court also refused to delay finalising the case pending separate constitutional litigation and declined requests to refer questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
The application followed the Court of Appeal’s January 2022 dismissal of an appeal against a High Court order striking out the proceedings as frivolous or vexatious, or bound to fail. The appellants had sought damages from the State, alleging a manifest infringement of their EU law rights in earlier litigation concerning the recapitalisation of Irish Life and Permanent plc. The State disputed their case.
Skoczylas asked the court to set aside or vary its January judgment under the principles in Re Greendale Developments, or to correct what he described as material and decisive errors. He argued that the court had acted beyond its jurisdiction by interpreting the CJEU’s earlier ruling in Dowling as effectively deciding the compatibility of a national measure with EU law. He said the ruling deprived the appellants of a hearing on the merits and breached EU law and procedural fairness. The State submitted that the application repeated arguments already decided on appeal and did not meet the high threshold for reopening a final judgment.
The court held that the Greendale and Nash principles require exceptional circumstances showing a fundamental denial of justice; they do not provide a route to reargue a decision because a party considers it wrong. It found that the January judgment had heard and addressed the appellants’ arguments, and rejected the claims that it violated EU law or denied procedural fairness. Skoczylas had not discharged the heavy burden required to reopen the judgment.
The court also refused his request to stay the case until the outcome of separate constitutional proceedings challenging the Credit Institutions (Stabilisation) Act 2010. It said the request was effectively to postpone finalising a case already heard and decided, and that the separate proceedings did not justify delaying finality. The court confirmed the dismissal of the appeal, leaving the High Court order in place and the entire proceedings struck out.
The court declined to refer the questions proposed by Skoczylas to the CJEU, finding that they were unnecessary to decide the application and that the proposed stay issue did not clearly raise a question of EU law. Costs of the application and the substantive appeal remain to be determined together at a future hearing.