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The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has upheld a complaint by a former Lotto winner that his right to a fair trial within a reasonable time had been violated by the Irish court system.
In a unanimous decision, the seven-judge court found that the time it took for the Supreme Court to process an appeal filed by former Lottery winner Vincent Keaney of Cobh, Co Cork was a violation of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights Rights.
It was also unanimously found that there was a violation of article 13, which refers to a person’s right to an effective remedy when there has been a violation of their rights.
However, the court decided not to award Mr. Keaney any financial award, due to the Irish Courts’ conclusions that the way in which he had carried out his unsuccessful pleas in the Irish Courts had come close to being an abuse of the process.
“It was not the court’s intention to provide a perverse incentive for applicants to pursue cases abusively at the national level only to try to secure a violation of the European Convention thereafter,” the court said in a statement released with the ruling. .
The Irish judge, Síofra O’Leary, who was one of the seven judges who heard the case, issued a separate but concurring judgment referring to “signs of a systemic problem” in the Irish judicial system in relation to the law to a timely judgment
She said that the fact that the case had been handled by a seven-judge “chamber” rather than a more regular three-judge committee, was the recognition of the importance of the issues raised by the case, specifically in relation to the Irish court system.
Titanic Bar and Restaurant
Keaney, who made £ 1 million in the mid-1990s when he was an unemployed single father, bought a building in Cobh with his earnings where he intended to run the Titanic Bar and Restaurant.
He invested nearly half a million pounds in the plan to convert the old Cunard White Star terminal into Cobh, which was used by the transatlantic route, but ran out of money.
Then he asked for a large loan in an attempt to complete the project and sought the investment of third parties.
However, the business was unsuccessful and in 2006 it initiated a process against 18 defendants, filing various claims, including deception, fraud and undue influence.
The entire process, in which Mr. Keaney ultimately failed, was resolved after 11 years and two months.
Many of his claims were found in Superior Court to be “frivolous or vexatious.”
The Supreme Court indicated that the addition of unsubstantiated allegations in its written communications was “nothing less than an abuse of process.”
The appeals were filed between 2007 and 2009, and were dismissed by the Supreme Court between 2015 and 2017.
Mr Keaney complained to the ECHR about the time elapsed between the institution of his civil proceedings and the delivery of the final judgment, stating that the organization of the Irish legal system had caused delays in his case.
The Luxembourg-based court has now found that the High Court proceedings were resolved within a reasonable time frame given Mr. Keaney’s conduct, but that this was not the case with the Supreme Court appeals, even though they persisted. problems with how Mr. Keaney processed those procedures.
It has decided that its conduct alone cannot justify the full duration of the appeal procedure.
Certain stages of the Supreme Court proceedings had been unreasonably prolonged. Mr. Keaney’s inaction in processing his appeals to the Supreme Court apparently persisted without repercussions until the moment the defendants took steps to dismiss them, the ECtHR said.
“Eight years passed between the appeal to the Supreme Court and the dismissal of his second appeal. There has been no adequate explanation of appeals that were left inactive for five to seven years. “
The court also found that it did not consider the Irish State’s view that individuals who had been denied a fair trial to seek damages through the courts to be an effective remedy.
He said he had pointed to problems in this area since 2003 and in various trials since then.
There were problems in relation to Irish jurisprudence, but “there is also concern about the speed of corrective action itself.”
He noted the time it took to process civil appeals in the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, citing data from the 2018 annual report of the Courts Service.
The ECHR noted that the 2018 bill to address the issue of reparation, the European Convention on Human Rights (Compensation for Delays in Legal Proceedings), was maintained at a pre-legislative stage. The court was told it required further consideration at the government level.
Ms. O’Leary said the case reflected “the daily reality facing courts in jurisdictions where the ratio of judges to the population is low, where the volume of litigation is substantially greater than the number of judges available to deal with it, where Resources are proportionally lacking, and where procedural rules may need a review to protect the courts and other litigants from those who waste their time. “
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