The High Court dismissed Brian Maxwell’s action against Irish Life Assurance plc and insurance broker John Fallon after finding that delay created a substantial risk a fair trial could not be held. The ruling was made on the defendants’ application to dismiss the proceedings for want of prosecution; the court did not decide the underlying insurance dispute at trial.
Mr Maxwell’s claim concerned a serious illness policy taken out in 2004. He sought payment of €50,000 after a medical episode in 2006, which he said was a heart attack covered by the policy. Irish Life declined the claim in 2007, voided the policy and cancelled it, alleging that Mr Maxwell had not disclosed that he smoked or that his mother had suffered a heart attack. The defendants also disputed that his medical episode met the policy’s definition of a heart attack. They counterclaimed for a declaration that Irish Life was entitled to avoid the policy.
Mr Maxwell alleged that after reviewing his policy documents in September 2004, his wife telephoned Mr Fallon to correct the record that he was a non-smoker. He said Mr Fallon assured her the error would be corrected without affecting his rights. The defendants denied that the call or assurance occurred. The judge noted that details of the alleged call were not provided until Mr Maxwell’s replies to particulars in December 2012, and the date within September remained unspecified.
Justice Keane found that the post-commencement delays were both inordinate and inexcusable. They included more than 22 months to answer the defendants’ request for particulars and a further two years before seeking discovery. The court rejected the explanations offered for those periods. It also considered the nearly three years between Irish Life’s rejection of the claim and the start of proceedings, observing that the late start made it more incumbent on Mr Maxwell to proceed promptly.
The judge gave little weight to the defendants’ delay in delivering their defence and their limited acquiescence in the later delays. Although the defendants’ evidence about difficulty communicating with Mr Fallon was too vague to carry weight, the central dispute depended on recollections of an undocumented call more than a decade earlier. With no contemporaneous witness statements, the judge concluded that fading memory created a substantial risk that a fair trial was no longer possible.
The court therefore ruled that the balance of justice favoured dismissal and ordered the action dismissed. It did not determine whether Mr Maxwell had made the disclosures he alleged, whether the call took place, or whether his 2006 medical episode was a covered heart attack.