The Supreme Court has allowed John Rooney to return to the High Court in his long-running proceedings concerning compensation arrangements under animal disease eradication schemes.
Mr Justice Finnegan held that an earlier Supreme Court order restricting further steps in the litigation should be interpreted narrowly. It applied to issues determined in a special case concerning compensation and grant payments, rather than automatically preventing Mr Rooney from pursuing every remaining part of his original action.
The litigation began decades earlier under the Diseases of Animals Act 1966. Mr Rooney challenged the operation of statutory compensation provisions and a non-statutory grant payment system administered by the Minister for Agriculture and Food.
A special case was heard in the High Court in January 1991 and rejected in May of that year. The Supreme Court dismissed the resulting appeal in December 1991. The court found in the present judgment, however, that the earlier orders had deliberately confined that decision to the claims contained in the special case and had not established whether other claims survived.
A later Supreme Court restraint order provided that Mr Rooney could take no further step in the proceedings, other than on costs, without leave of that court. When he subsequently sought to revive a High Court motion to amend his statement of claim, the High Court held that the restraint prevented him from doing so without Supreme Court permission.
The Supreme Court has now reversed that interpretation. It held that the restraint related only to the special-case proceedings and did not bar Mr Rooney from pursuing any genuinely outstanding claims.
The ruling does not establish that such claims actually exist or that any proposed amendment should be allowed. Those questions are for the High Court.
The Supreme Court therefore remitted the amendment motion to the High Court. A separate appeal dating from 1990, concerning refusal of judgment in default of defence, also remains outstanding and is to be addressed separately.