The Court of Appeal has dismissed Lawrence Shields’s appeal against the striking out of his judicial review challenge to the Central Bank of Ireland’s initial refusal to exchange damaged banknotes.
In a judgment delivered by Ms Justice Faherty on 26 October 2022, the court upheld the High Court’s decision that the proceedings had become moot. The court found that the Central Bank’s later decision to exchange the notes, and its transfer of the money, had left no live controversy for the judicial review to resolve. It did not decide whether the Bank’s original assessment that the notes had been intentionally damaged was correct.
Shields applied in February 2019 to exchange damaged notes worth €4,950. He said they had been retrieved from a fire. The Bank refused in April 2019, saying its assessment indicated intentional chemical damage, and withheld them. It invited further information, including details about the source of the notes and the circumstances of the fire. In July 2019, Shields’s solicitors said his partner had inadvertently placed the notes in a workshop furnace while cleaning it, and that plastic containers and chemicals used in his fibreglass work may have damaged them.
After further testing, the Bank wrote to Shields in November 2019 that the results were inconclusive and did not meet the threshold for withholding the notes under the relevant European Central Bank decision. It decided to exchange them. The money was transferred to Shields in January 2020.
Shields argued on appeal that the case remained live because he had also sought reports and testing information, declarations about his procedural and property rights, and damages for the period the money was withheld. He submitted that the second decision did not resolve his complaints about the basis and fairness of the first decision.
The Court of Appeal rejected those arguments. It held that the complaints about process, reasons and disclosure were linked to the first decision, which had been superseded. It also found that the damages claim lacked pleaded detail about the loss alleged and did not keep the proceedings live. The court said any request for documents for separate defamation proceedings could be pursued through discovery in those proceedings.
A separate judicial review concerning another batch of notes and a Garda investigation did not keep this case alive, the court said. Those matters related to the later application, not the exchange application before it. The court also declined to exercise its discretion to hear the otherwise moot case, finding no sufficient basis in the circumstances.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and upheld the High Court’s decision, including its costs ruling. It proposed that the Central Bank receive its appeal costs, subject to any party notifying the Court of Appeal Office within 21 days if it sought a different costs order.