A doctor and landlord who evicted a Sri Lankan couple and their three young children has been ordered to pay them €25,000 damages for assault and trespass.
"The day when landlords can go into a property and bundle up the possessions of a family and evict them are hopefully long past," Judge Olive Buttimer said in the Circuit Civil Court yesterday.
She told Dr William Whately, Dundalk, Co Louth, he had employed security men in Dundalk and had acted without having sought the advice of his solicitor.
"It is no excuse to come here and say that items belonging to females in the house had been packed into plastic bags only by female members of his family," she said.
"It was an invasion of privacy and trespass," said the judge.
Mr Ross Maguire, counsel for Mr Krishna Kularajah Ponnudurai, his wife and three children, told the court they were Irish citizens who had rented an apartment in Woodstock Gardens, Ranelagh, from Dr Whately.
On September 19th, 2001, Mr Ponnudurai had returned from leaving his sons, aged nine and 12, to school only to find his wife, Anulawathi, and daughter, Piradeepa (16), on the front lawn.
All their belongings, including a holy Hindu shrine, had been packed into black plastic bags and left out in the garden.
Mr Maguire said the shrine, which included holy water and candles, had to be dismantled ritually in a very special way if a family was moving it from one house to another.
He said Ms Anulawathi Ponnudurai and Piradeepa had been in their night attire when up to 10 men and women arrived shortly after 8 a.m. and told them they had to get out.
Mr Maguire told the court a consent eviction order had been obtained by Dr Whately but claimed the "remarkable series of events of September 19th" had taken place during a period of four weeks allegedly agreed with the Ponnudurais to allow them to find alternative accommodation.
Dr Whately denied Ms Ponnudurai or her daughter had been in any way unclothed when he, his wife, two daughters and security men recruited in Dundalk had entered the house to take possession of it.
He said he required the apartment for his daughters, Catherine and Helen, who were due to attend college in Dublin. He had not been aware of any agreement extending the Ponnudurai's tenancy in the apartment.
The doctor said he had "pre-planned" the visit to the apartment on the basis the family was willing to leave and that he was entitled to ask them to leave.
Dr Whately told Mr Maguire that while he believed the Ponnudurais intended leaving by consent, he had felt it prudent to cover all eventualities by arranging the presence of security men from Dundalk.
Judge Buttimer, who said she felt the employment of security men was to ensure possession of the apartment, awarded €5,000 damages each to Mr Ponnudurai and his wife, and €5,000 each to their three children, Piradeepa (now 19); Edison (12) and Christo (15).