The Court of Appeal has allowed Stephen Beatty’s appeal in a claim alleging sexual abuse by his father, Walter Beatty. The appeal concerned whether a defendant can rely on delay to seek dismissal of a claim when the delay was allegedly caused by that defendant’s wrongdoing.
In a judgment delivered on 19 March 2025, Mr Justice Woulfe agreed with Mr Justice Noonan’s reasons for allowing the appeal and added brief comments. Ms Justice Burns authorised him to record her agreement with the judgment.
The judgment addresses the “interests of justice” strand of the court’s inherent jurisdiction to dismiss proceedings for delay. Woulfe J. agreed that, as a matter of principle, a defendant should not be entitled to rely on delay allegedly resulting from the defendant’s own wrongdoing to have the claim dismissed. He said such an approach would be difficult to regard as fair or just.
He also said that this position was supported by earlier authorities, including O’Domhnaill v. Merrick, Toal v. Duignan (No. 1) and Manning v. Benson & Hedges Limited. Discussing a passage from Nash v. DPP, he said it meant that a delay-based dismissal could arise regardless of whether blame attached to any party; it did not make a defendant’s culpability irrelevant.
The judgment also agreed that, on an application of this kind, the court must take the plaintiff’s case at its height. That includes medical evidence presented by the plaintiff that he could not pursue the claim before 2017 because of impairment caused by the alleged abuse.
The ruling allows the appeal. The supplied judgment does not state the further order made or set out the full reasons in Noonan J.’s judgment, which Woulfe J. adopted. It therefore does not establish a final outcome for the underlying claim.