The High Court struck out a petition brought by Angela Farrell against the Law Society of Ireland and related interlocutory applications, finding that they amounted to a collateral attack on final court orders. It also restrained Farrell from bringing specified further proceedings against the Society without prior leave of the court.
In an extempore judgment delivered on 20 April 2018, President of the High Court Mr Justice Kelly said the petition, presented on 24 January, sought to “regularise” Farrell’s affairs, restore her to her “office, place, situation and benefit”, and compel the Registrar of Solicitors to issue her an annual practising certificate. The Society applied to strike out the proceedings and sought an Isaac Wunder order restricting further litigation.
The judgment recounted a series of earlier orders. In 2013, following 28 complaints received over the preceding two years, the Society imposed conditions on Farrell’s practising certificate. The High Court struck out her appeal against those conditions on 14 October 2013. Orders made in December 2013 restricted her practice and later allowed the Society to collect client files from her premises. In June 2014, following findings of professional misconduct by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, the High Court struck Farrell off the Roll of Solicitors and ordered her to pay €40,600 in restitution to a client. The judgment said she had not appealed those orders, while an appeal concerning the October 2013 order had not been pursued.
Kelly said the petition and related applications sought, among other things, to challenge the earlier orders and compel the issue of a practising certificate. He found that the High Court could not use the petition to declare its prior orders invalid, and that the proceedings disclosed no proper basis for reopening them. He also described allegations made in the petition about court and Society officials as unsupported and vexatious.
The court struck out the petition and subsequent interlocutory applications as scandalous, vexatious, disclosing no reasonable cause of action and constituting an abuse of process. Separately, it ordered that Farrell could not, without prior leave, bring further proceedings against the Law Society, its past or present members, or any of them, to challenge the validity of the orders of 14 October 2013, 16 December 2013 and 24 June 2014, or to compel issue of a practising certificate while she was not on the Roll. The order did not cover the 2014 bankruptcy order, to which the Society had not been a party; the judge said he would extend the restriction if proceedings were brought against the Society concerning that order.