The High Court awarded Frank McBrearty and Company Limited €2,475,047 in damages for losses linked to events following Richard Barron’s death, and directed that certain legal costs be assessed separately by an agreed arbitrator.
In a judgment delivered on 25 October 2007, Mr Justice Paul Gilligan assessed damages after the defendants accepted liability for the company’s provable and legally recoverable losses arising from wrongful actions by Garda members identified by the Morris Tribunal. The proceedings were therefore limited to assessing damages; the defendants disputed some categories and amounts claimed.
The company operated a licensed premises and nightclub in Raphoe, Co Donegal. It claimed that Garda activity and prosecutions after Mr Barron’s death damaged its business. The court found that the events following his death were the major factor in the company’s decline. It set a €75,000 annual profit baseline and assessed lost profits from October 1996 to the end of 2004 at €1.5 million.
The judge also awarded €550,000 for the lost opportunity to develop a restaurant with rooms above it, finding on the balance of probabilities that the company would have pursued that project. He did not accept that it would have built the larger proposed hotel or acquired another licensed premises. A further €400,000 was awarded for loss of capital value, measured as at the end of 2004. The court allowed €25,047 for specified accounting and administrative fees.
The judgment records that 50 District Court summonses containing 157 charges were ultimately withdrawn on the Director of Public Prosecutions’ direction in June 2000. The judge was not satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that the defendants in those cases would have been found guilty of unlawful trading, and rejected the defendants’ public-policy argument against compensation on that basis. The withdrawal was not a finding of guilt or innocence in the District Court.
The company’s claim for costs of complaints to the Garda Complaints Board was disallowed. The judge also declined to decide costs in a separate judicial review matter that remained extant and could be re-entered. He directed that reasonable legal costs for defending the summonses and specified other proceedings be assessed by an agreed arbitrator on a solicitor-client basis. Those costs are additional to the €2,475,047 award.