A judge has ordered the return of a stolen €76,000 Georgian fireplace to its original owner. The antique was stolen in August 1990 in a burglary from Summer Grove Stud, Mountmellick, Co Laois.
It went to London and Japan before it was eventually returned here, where it was seized while on display at a Dublin antiques show in 2000.
It belonged to Mr John Dowling, from Bray, Co Wicklow, who at the time of its theft was the owner of Summer Grove. In 1991, it turned up at a fireplace and reproduction outlet in Dublin, where it was sold for £5,000 sterling on a commission basis on behalf of a builder and antiques spotter, Len Woodburn, to Mr Patrick Pilkington, a British antiques dealer living in Coole, Co Westmeath.
After it was seized by officers from the Garda Antiques and Arts Unit, Mr Pilkington brought a Police Property Act application, seeking its return. But Mr Dowling, who found and held on to a piece of carving from the fireplace left behind by the burglars for identification purposes, contested the application.
Mr Pilkington claimed that under the Statute of Limitations ownership expired after six years and that, as he had bought, sold and bought back the fireplace between 1991 and 1999, he was now the legal owner.
Judge Gerard Haughton said yesterday that while he agreed that Mr Pilkington had acquired the fireplace under the Statute of Limitations, the court was also required to consider ownership on public policy grounds, for which he cited British legal precedent. The judge said he was not satisfied with the credibility of Mr Pilkington and the documentation he had furnished to back up his case. "While I said last week that there was no suggestion of wrongdoing by any party in this case, the situation now appears to be otherwise."
The original purchase of the fireplace had been carried out in a most unusual way and the subsequent sale to a Japanese country club and its reacquisition had been done in secrecy. It was never purchased on the open market, a pre-requisite for vesting ownership under sale of goods legislation.
Mr Pilkington had bought it through his business contacts with the late Mr Woodburn and a year later he sold it for sterling £9,000 through another business contact, an interior designer. He bought it back seven years later for £15,000 sterling (including transport costs), again through a business contact in Japan, where the country club had failed to get off the ground.
In 2000, through another business contact, Desmond Fitzgerald, he put it up for sale at the Irish Antiques Fair for £60,000 (€76,184), where it was seized.
"In my view, it would be clearly contrary to public policy to allow Mr Pilkington to benefit to such an substantial degree if he had acquired under the Statute of Limitations what was clearly stolen property and where his credibility and dealings have been tainted by secrecy, questionable documentation and unreliable, indeed unbelievable, evidence."
Judge Haughton added that, despite the Statute of Limitations, even if the fireplace burglars were caught and convicted at this stage, ownership would revert to Mr Dowling. "I do not see why he should be disadvantaged by the failure to catch the thief and accordingly I order it be returned to Mr Dowling."