The High Court has set aside the joinder of State defendants in a personal injuries action arising from alleged abuse at a Christian Brothers school in Limerick in 1967 and 1968. It also struck out the plaintiff’s claim against those defendants, ruling that it was clearly statute barred and, separately, bound to fail.
The application was brought by the Minister for Education and Skills, Ireland and the Attorney General. The plaintiff alleges that a Christian Brother who taught at the school sexually and otherwise abused him as a child. He claimed the State defendants were vicariously liable and negligent in failing to protect him, and also pleaded claims under the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003.
The plaintiff issued proceedings against the first two defendants in February 2011. A Master’s order joined the State defendants on 24 October 2014, after the European Court of Human Rights’ January 2014 judgment in *O’Keeffe v Ireland*. The State defendants then asked the High Court to set aside that joinder, arguing that the claim was time barred or disclosed no reasonable cause of action.
Justice Noonan said an application to undo joinder should be granted only sparingly and in clear cases. The acts alleged occurred decades before the State defendants were joined. The plaintiff relied on disability under section 48A of the Statute of Limitations and argued that his date of knowledge was the date of the European court’s *O’Keeffe* judgment. But the evidence before the court included no affidavit from the plaintiff or expert report supporting disability. The judge also found that the plaintiff had known the relevant underlying facts; later awareness that those facts might establish legal liability did not postpone the limitation period.
The court rejected an estoppel argument based on letters from the State Claims Agency. The letters postdated the plaintiff’s decision not to pursue the State, which the evidence attributed to legal advice that there was no valid claim. The judge found the correspondence could not establish the required reliance.
Separately, the court held that the European Convention claims could not be pursued directly in domestic law and that the 2003 Act did not apply retrospectively to events decades before it took effect. The judge said the vicarious-liability claim was inconsistent with the law as it stood, and the negligence claim also could not succeed under the reasoning in *O’Keeffe v Hickey*. He noted that the present case had no prior complaint of abuse by the second defendant.
The court set aside the Master’s order joining the State defendants and struck out the claim against them. The judgment did not determine the allegations against the first two defendants.