Former Dublin county registrar Rita Considine adopted “an unnecessarily aggressive, threatening and litigious approach” to a dispute with her neighbours over an extension to the neighbours’ home, a judge has found.
Judge Jennifer O’Brien in the Dublin Circuit Civil Court dismissed claims brought by the Courts Service official in a case that involved nine days of hearings, legal teams headed by senior counsel on both sides and expert evidence.
She made an order for costs in favour of the neighbours but agreed to a stay in the event of an appeal, despite objections from Ted Harding SC, representing the neighbours, who said they had been put to “very considerable costs” over a three-year period.
Ms Considine took the case in November 2021 against retired couple, Michael and Anne Flanagan, and their daughter, Sinead, the legal owner of her parents’ home at “an address in Dublin”. The court heard Ms Considine and her husband, solicitor David Christie, moved into their home in 2003.
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Ms Considine, currently registrar for Limerick and Clare, claimed she entered into an agreement with the defendants in 2019 whereby she would not object to planning permission to their planned extension.
In return, she was told there would be no trespass on her property, all work would occur within the curtilage of the neighbours’ property, a mature evergreen hedge between the properties would not be damaged and windows would be moved so they did not overlook her property.
Judge O’Brien ruled that there had been, at best, an “understanding between neighbours” about how to proceed. She quoted the late Paul Anthony McDermott SC’s book, Contract Law, which stated that “generally good neighbours will assist each other without ever imagining that they are creating legally binding relations”.
Demolition and excavation work began in June 2021 and, after damage was noticed to a boundary wall, a meeting was held between representatives of the two property owners and an agreement reached.
Ms Considine claimed the agreement was subsequently breached and, among other matters, that the work carried out by her neighbours led to damp in the garage that she and her husband used as a home gym and utility room.
Mr Christie, who told the hearings he was not party to the proceedings as he was unwell at the time they were brought, said he could not be exposed to dampness because he had a serious asthmatic illness.
He said he and his wife did everything they could to try to resolve the matter and were left with no choice but to bring the proceedings.
In their submissions, the defendants described as “inexplicable” Ms Considine’s refusal to engage in mediation and said that she and her husband had sought to “weaponise their legal experience”.
Ms Considine’s refusal to engage in mediation was “all the more inexcusable due to her role as county registrar in relation to alternative dispute resolution in the Circuit Court rules”, they submitted.
The judge, in her 119-page judgment on Thursday, said the correspondence between the two sides “makes for difficult reading and the court is satisfied that [Ms Considine] adopted an unnecessarily aggressive, threatening and litigious approach from the outset”.
“It is clear the defendants made efforts towards resolution of the matter from the outset” and “notable” that Ms Considine refused to engage in mediation, causing the defendants to motion the court in that regard, she said.
“The court accepts the contention proffered by the defendants that the plaintiff’s conduct in this matter shows a determination on her part to pursue the claim to trial. This is a most unfortunate approach to take to any dispute, least of all a dispute between neighbours,” said the judge.
On the issue of dampness in the garage, the judge said she did not accept it had been proven that any dampness, insofar as it existed, had been caused by the construction work.
Ms Considine was represented by James Dwyer SC, Conor Kearney, instructed by Blake Horrigan solicitors, while the defendants were represented by Mr Harding, and Eamon Murray SC, instructed by Hennessy and Perrozzi solicitors.
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