P -v- Attorney General Ors
Neutral citation (2010) IEHC 473.
High Court
Judgment was delivered on December 12th, 2010, by Mr Justice John MacMenamin.
Judgment
A woman who challenged her detention under the 2001 Mental Health Act failed to obtain leave for her application and was warned any attempt to relitigate the same issues would lead to significant broader consequences.
Background
This was the second of two judgments relating to an attempt to bring proceedings regarding the applicant’s detention in 2009 under section 73 of the Mental Health Act 2001. The defendants in the action, the attorney general, the HSE and Sheila, had sought prohibitory reliefs, including an “Isaac Wunder” order.
The earlier application related to intended proceedings against these defendants, along with the minister for justice, arising out of the applicant’s detention in Cavan Hospital psychiatric unit in 2009.
Two other sets of proceedings had been brought by the same applicant against the same defendants, and had been struck out as frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of process.
In this case, the applicant sought leave to sue the defendants relating to her detention, and also sought telephone records and records of alleged phone-tapping she claimed was carried out against her.
In her grounding affidavit, she said she came to Ireland in 2000 to investigate her late sister’s alleged activities with the IRA. She claimed that MI5 provided the Irish Government with incorrect information about her and her family; that various persons carried out surveillance on her, which she threw off her trail; that British intelligence agencies profiled her as “bipolar” and that the Government and the HSE accepted this without medical investigation.
She claimed HSE psychiatrists, acting on behalf of MI5 and Fianna Fáil, refused to listen to her that she was mentally well. She also claimed psychiatrists refused to examine alleged threatening texts from the Garda Síochána. These matters had been raised in her previous proceedings and no corroborative evidence was produced, the judge said.
Mr Justice MacMenamin outlined the history of the proceedings so far, including a number of claims for damages by the applicant, the most recent for €20 million.
The history included a “pattern of non-appearances and non-observance of court procedures” on the part of the applicant.
He said in his order following the previous set of proceedings, there was no evidence before the court of any evidence of want of bona fides on the part of the doctors who treated the applicant, nor was there any prima facie case established of breach of duty on the part of members of the Garda Síochána in detaining her.
Decision
Mr Justice MacMenamin said the applicant must by now be well aware of the legal principles and the nature of remedies available to the court in order to prevent frivolous and vexatious proceedings and abuse of court process.
“Any objective perusal of the chronology and the series of events which have taken place thus far can now only lead to the conclusion that not only has the plaintiff/applicant, whether wittingly or not, sought to reignite proceedings held to be frivolous and vexatious, but she has also engaged in abuse of the court process by repeatedly seeking to litigate the same matter . . . There is a public interest aspect to litigation and court time, especially at a time of scarce national resources.”
However, he said that an order of the court that delimits constitutional rights must be proportionate. He did not think it would be just to restrain her from initiating any proceedings which had not been properly ventilated, but if it were to transpire that she sought to relitigate earlier matters the court had ample jurisdiction to restrain such conduct.
He therefore made an order restraining her from initiating or relitigating against any of the named defendants with regard to her treatment between November 2008 and March 2009, the time of her previous detention.
He did not consider it fair to make an order in relation to any detention in 2010, when there was no evidence concerning the circumstances.
However, he said that any attempt to further relitigate the same issues against the same defendants could lead to significantly broader consequences.
The full judgment is on courts.ie