A 63-year-old woman who told the High Court she was viciously assaulted after a large force of gardaí kicked down the door of her flat while arresting a youth in her home has lost her claim against the State for damages.
Mr Justice Frank Clarke said in a reserved judgment that gardaí had attended a neighbouring flat to that of Ann Osbourne, of Fitzgerald Park, Mounttown, Dún Laoghaire, with the purpose of apprehending a Robert Merrigan, whom they suspected of having committed a burglary. They had obtained a search warrant for both 44 and 45 Fitzgerald Park, as both flats had balconies to the rear which could be easily accessed one to the other. Mr Merrigan had not been found in No 44 and when gardaí had gone to No 45, Merrigan spoke to them but refused to open the door, which gardaí then forced open.
Judge Clarke said Ms Osbourne had been taking tea with friends in a common area of the flats complex and had claimed that when she reached her apartment the front door was on the ground and Mr Merrigan was on her couch with his mother lying over him and two policemen beating him with batons.
She had said gardaí told her to f... off and that she had been thrown against her mantelpiece, kicked in the leg and that a garda had stood on her foot.
Garda evidence contended she had never entered her apartment and that there had been a large crowd outside, many of whom were hostile to gardaí as they had taken Mr Merrigan away.
Judge Clarke held that the search warrant for No 45, which had been issued by a peace commissioner, had been technically invalid, but said he was not satisfied the senior Garda officer in charge had been aware there was any defect in it or that there had been any deliberate violation of Ms Osbourne's rights.
He said any defect in the warrant was not such as to enable Ms Osbourne to recover damages. It was unfortunate that more than 10 years had elapsed since the incident but he believed Ms Osbourne had given an account of the events as she now believed them to have occurred and had not sought to mislead the court.
She now believed she had suffered her injuries in the manner she had described in evidence but he was not satisfied that was in fact what had occurred.
He was satisfied that what in fact occurred was that she had been outside her property attempting to gain access and had come to be injured in the course of the hostile action being taken by other persons against the gardaí. Judge Clarke said he would deal with the question of costs later.