The Court of Appeal has dismissed Neil Reidy’s appeal against a High Court refusal to extend time for defamation proceedings arising from an email sent to the Wexford Court Office on 11 March 2018. The court held that an application to extend time did not stop the limitation period running and that the High Court lacked jurisdiction to grant the extension because proceedings had not been issued within two years of the alleged publication.
The email complained of alleged fraud and criminal activity by Reidy and included an English translation of a letter written to him by Czeslaw Pasek. Reidy alleged that Pasek sent the email; Pasek denied doing so. The judgment says a Polish police investigation was inconclusive and that the sender’s identity remained disputed.
Reidy had earlier brought defamation proceedings over Pasek’s December 2017 letter. Those proceedings were struck out for want of jurisdiction, and the High Court refused Reidy permission to amend his claim to include the March 2018 email, treating it as a new cause of action. That earlier case is now at an end.
In July 2019, Reidy filed a motion seeking an extension of the one-year limit for a new claim concerning the email. But the Court of Appeal found no evidence that he had issued a plenary summons for that claim within two years of the alleged publication. A document he later produced was unstamped, had no record number and appeared not to have been issued by the Central Office. A court search showed that an earlier record related to an intended application, and that a judge had granted him liberty to bring a motion on notice to extend time.
The High Court had ruled that an extension could be considered only if proceedings were issued within the extended two-year period. The Court of Appeal agreed. It said the motion itself did not pause time and that the statute contained no provision to that effect. It dismissed the appeal in limine, citing the absence of grounds challenging the High Court’s reasoning. It also concluded that the failure to issue proceedings within two years was fatal to the application and appeal.
The appeal was dismissed. The Court of Appeal did not decide whether the High Court had erred in its separate assessment of the statutory factors for exercising discretion to extend time, because it found it unnecessary to reach that question.