A High Court judge has said the legal system is being brought into disrepute by delays in processing certain cases before the court. All the cases referred to by Mr Justice Kelly involve judicial review applications and deal with issues of public law.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Kelly said such cases ought to be dealt with expeditiously because of the nature of the issues raised by them. He cited a number of cases which had been in the court for two years or more and which had been adjourned for a multiplicity of reasons.
One barrister, when asking for an adjournment, was told by the judge that this was the 30th such application for adjournment. Other cases had been adjourned on 18 occasions and upwards, he noted.
The judge said such incidents brought the system into disrepute. In one case, he asked for lawyers to be present in court to explain why there were so many adjournments.
He warned that he did not propose to allow the system become cluttered up in this manner. It was "quite scandalous" that cases begun three years ago were still only in the court list "for mention" and had not progressed to being heard, to say nothing of the costs being incurred, the judge added.
In a number of cases where barristers sought further adjournments, the judge said he was withdrawing the cases from the list and adjourning them generally with liberty to the parties to re-enter them when the cases had been advanced to seeking a date for hearing. In other cases, he said he wanted the lawyers to come to court and explain why there were such delays.
In a couple of applications, while allowing time to put in further documentation, the judge warned that if such documentation was not received within periods stipulated by him, then the applicants in each case would be entitled to whatever orders or reliefs they were seeking from the court.