Case dismissed after DNA disproves paternity

A JUDGE yesterday threw out a claim by a 10-year old girl against a deceased Clare man after DNA tests concluded that the man was not the girl’s father.

In the case, the girl, through her mother claimed that she was entitled to a benefit of the estate of the dead man. At Ennis Circuit Court, Judge Rory McCabe acceded to a motion by the widow of the man, that the action by the girl, suing through her mother, be thrown out. Counsel for the man’s widow told Judge McCabe that a DNA test of a biopsy sample taken from the man “proves that the girl is not the daughter of the defendant’s late husband”.

The man’s family was first notified of the claim through the girl’s solicitor by letter three weeks after he died on in April 2009.

The girl’s mother provided her daughter’s birth cert to the man’s family, but it contained no information as to the identity of the girl’s father. The family agreed to a request from the girl’s mother’s solicitor that they allow a DNA test of material retained at the Mid West Regional Hospital in Limerick from a biopsy procedure carried out on the man in 2006.

Counsel said that it took an extraordinary amount of time for the girl’s solicitors to reveal the results of the DNA test. Once it was confirmed the deceased was not the girl’s father, the judge agreed to an application by the family’s counsel that the action be struck out and awarded costs to the dead man’s widow.