The High Court has struck out Peter Nowak’s €50 million claim against the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland after finding that he allowed the case to remain inactive for about eight and a half years.
Nowak began the proceedings in February 2015 following disputes about professional accountancy examinations he sat in 2009. His amended statement of claim alleged, among other matters, that examination marks had been altered without authority, that documents had been forged, that examination rules had been breached and that his data-protection rights had been infringed. The Institute denied the allegations.
After exchanging pleadings and discovery requests in 2015, Nowak took no further substantive step until May 2024, when he issued a motion seeking a preliminary determination on the legality of examination regulations and his training contract.
The Institute applied to strike out the action for want of prosecution. It also pointed to the age of the allegations and the fact that two potential witnesses were no longer readily available.
Mr Justice Barry O’Donnell held that the case fell squarely within the category identified by the Supreme Court in Kirwan v Connors, where more than five years of complete inactivity gives the court broad power to dismiss unless a pressing requirement of justice demands a trial.
Nowak argued that the Institute had agreed, or later acquiesced, in postponing the case while related litigation against PwC and the Data Protection Commissioner continued. The judge rejected that account. Correspondence showed that Nowak had expressly rejected an initial 2015 proposal to pause the case and continued pursuing it. A later 2016 letter referring to separate PwC proceedings did not establish acquiescence, particularly as those proceedings ended in February 2017.
The court also rejected Nowak’s argument that his other litigation entitled him to suspend this case unilaterally.
The action was therefore struck out, along with his preliminary-issue motion. The judge’s provisional view was that the Institute should recover its costs, with final submissions listed for September 23, 2025.