A man is claiming in High Court proceedings that he has been wrongfully disinherited from his uncle’s €3 million farm after the uncle’s priest brother returned from the US after allegations of improper behaviour with young men and alcoholism.
Damien Quane, of Rathany, Hospital, Co Limerick, claims that when Fr Patrick Doherty returned in 1993 to his bachelor brother Thomas Doherty’s 145-acre holding at Home Farm, Elton, Knocklong, Co Limerick, he continued to cause public scandal by his behaviour. Thomas’s mental capacity had deteriorated by 2012/2013, it is claimed.
Patrick Doherty, who was also an executor, died last September. Thomas Doherty died in 2024.
It is claimed by Quane that when Thomas Doherty changed his will in 2013, he did not understand its nature and content or that he was disinheriting Quane. In that will, he left the 145 acres to another nephew, James Raleigh.
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It is also claimed that Quane helped Thomas Doherty around the farm from an early age and had been repeatedly promised the farm.
The deceased had made four previous wills, between 1997 and 2007, in which he bequeathed Home Farm lands and the milk quota to Quane, it is alleged.
About another 80 acres, referred to by the deceased as the “outside farm”, was to be sold and the proceeds distributed to family members, including Patrick Doherty.
It is also claimed that at the time he revoked the previous wills and made his 2013 will, Thomas Doherty lacked testamentary capacity and that Patrick Doherty exerted dominion over the affairs of the deceased.
It is further claimed that when Quane confronted the priest about his lifestyle and controlling behaviour over Thomas Doherty, the relationship between them “turned sour, leading later to the plaintiff being disinherited”.
Thomas Doherty had a heart bypass in 1999 and it is claimed he afterwards became more dependent on Quane. It is also claimed that Quane, from 2001 to 2015, farmed some 132 acres of the land with Thomas Doherty retaining the remainder.
Quane felt assured he was farming the land for his own benefit, it is claimed, as over the years, Thomas Doherty had repeatedly said things like, “the place is there for you”.
The atmosphere at Home Farm changed, the court heard, upon the permanent return of Patrick Doherty from the US Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin, in 1993, “after allegations of alcohol dependency and reported improper behaviour with young adult men causing public scandal, which were unknown to the deceased and his family”.
It is claimed the priest continued “his unorthodox lifestyle which included excessive drinking, drink driving and nocturnal activity involving young adult men, some of whom stayed at the dwelling house at Home Farm at Elton for extended periods in the presence of the deceased”.
This, it is claimed, caused public scandal, embarrassment and distress to Thomas Doherty to such an extent that Quane once saw him sitting on his couch in a foetal position “in a confused and agitated state as Fr Patrick Doherty went enthusiastically about his lifestyle”.
In 2015, Thomas went into a nursing home suffering from dementia and was placed under wardship in 2019. Upon his death in September 2024, he had been suffering from vascular dementia for 10 years, it is claimed.
Subsequent to his death, it transpired that the farm had in fact not been gifted to Quane.
On Tuesday, Judge Brian Cregan granted David Sutton, counsel for Quane, interim orders restraining Waterford accountant Larry O’Brien, the executor of Thomas Doherty’s estate, from taking any further steps to offer the land for sale or from administering the estate, pending further order.
The application was made on an ex parte basis, with only one side represented. The judge declined to order that the for-sale signs on the farm be taken down until he heard from the other side when the case returns on Thursday.
