The High Court has rejected an application by three plaintiffs for Mr Justice Twomey to recuse himself from making final orders, including costs, arising from an earlier judgment in their case challenging the State’s voluntary Covid-19 vaccination programme for children.
The recusal application came after the judge’s 25 April 2023 ruling refused the plaintiffs a protective costs order. That order would have limited their exposure to the defendants’ legal costs if they lost the substantive case. In that earlier ruling, the judge found the case amounted to an abuse of process, citing claims about the vaccine and comparisons with Nazi actions.
The plaintiffs argued that the judgment showed bias. They said the judge had ignored their evidence and objected to terms including “conspiracy theory”, “baseless” and “scandalous”. The judge noted that they had not objected to him hearing the case before or during the hearing, and that their complaint arose only after the ruling.
In his 4 July 2023 judgment, Mr Justice Twomey said complaints about the conclusions or language in the earlier ruling were matters for an appeal, not grounds to seek recusal from final orders after judgment had been delivered. He applied principles from earlier cases that alleged bias relevant to recusal must arise from facts existing before judgment, and that an adverse decision alone does not establish bias.
The judge therefore rejected the application concerning final orders, including costs. He did not decide whether he should recuse himself from any future motions or the substantive hearing: he was not currently assigned to hear those matters, and their assignment to him was uncertain. He also said he could not decide the plaintiffs’ broader suggestion that the High Court as a whole should recuse itself.