Practice & Procedure
Case Management is here
Judicial Case Management is a system designed to identify and define issues in dispute and to reduce delays, costs and unnecessary pre-trial activities.
Lazarus Ltd.
However, the liquidator owes the creditors a duty to, generally, find and get in the assets of the company. The liquidator also is obliged to notify the creditors of the company of the fact of liquidation and to seek out the creditors. He cannot just wait for them to contact him. The duty of the liquidator is a statutory duty. The records of the company will be the source of information regarding claims against the company.
Que sera, sera
Irish lawyers, arguably, are in denial.
Swinging in the wind
In fact a judicial system needs lawyers as much as any litigant.
Class Actions?
This state of affairs is favourable to wrongdoers, especially corporate wrongdoers. To permit class actions is to admit that, often, individuals can have a reasonable prospect of justice against a modern corporation, or the state, only through the action of a collective.
Pleading the Belly
However, I look forward to the case where I inform a court that my client will so plead.
Money, Money, Money
It is a principle of Irish (and UK) law that the purpose of the award of compensation by the courts is to, insofar as money can, place the injured party in the same position as if he/she had not been injured.
An Unpleasant Discovery
hat some members of the Irish High Court currently make orders for the provision of, effectively, “general discovery�? is superior anecdotal evidence to the reflections flowing from Brooks Thomas Ltd. V Impac Ltd. [1999] 1 I.L.R.M. They prefer to do justice than to respect a dubious proposition simply because it is in a statutory instrument.
Indictments are like cheques; sign them!
endorsed the decision in R v Morais (1988) 87 Cr App R 9. In that case the judge had given leave to prefer a voluntary bill against the accused, who was arraigned on six counts in the bill. The accused pleaded not guilty, was convicted on four counts and was sentenced. Relying on the Administration of Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1933, he appealed on the ground that the bill had never been signed by the proper officer: without a signature, he argued, there could be no indictment, and without an indictment there could be no valid trial.
In Morais the Court of Appeal agreed with the submission. The court endorsed a statement of Peter Pain J in an earlier case:
It seems to us that it is impossible for a criminal trial to start without there being a valid indictment to which the defendant can plead, and that the bill of indictment does not become an indictment until it is signed”.
In Ireland the relevant legislation is the Criminal Justice (Administration) Act 1924. It mandates the form of the indictment in the Act and in the First Schedule to the Act. The choice of indictment is limited to the charges expressed or implied in the documents known as the âBook of Evidenceâ? served on the accused.
The sequel to the Book of Evidence
It is currently unchallenged, in Ireland, that an accused person is entitled to access to the evidence, prior to trial, that the State intends to adduce against him/her at trial. In Ireland, for many years, the procedure to secure that entitlement for the accused was set out in the Criminal Procedure Act 1967. That Act conferred a role on the District Court, in indictable cases, in deciding whether to send a person forward for trial to the Circuit Court or […]