A €38,000 claim after gardaí seized and then wrote off a motorist's car in a crash was settled for an undisclosed sum in the Circuit Civil Court yesterday.
Ms Joanne McCullagh had sued the Minister for Justice for €38,000 damages including aggravated and exemplary damages.
The settlement was announced shortly after Mr Justice Esmond Smyth said very serious issues arose from the incident. Judge Smyth had asked and was told there had never been an internal investigation into the matter within the Garda Síochána.
He was shown photographs taken by the car-owner Joanne McCullagh of tyre skidmarks at the scene of the crash after she had been told Garda Fogarty, of the Bridewell Garda station, who was driving it away at the time, had claimed the car's brakes had failed.
Ms McCullagh, a civil servant who works in the Motor Taxation Office in Dublin, told her counsel, David Conlan-Smyth, a number of gardaí at the car pound seemed to find the crash hilarious and had attempted to stop her taking photographs of her smashed car.
Mr Justice Smyth said Ms McCullagh's Honda Integra had been validly insured for her and her partner Robert Semple to drive. It had valid tax, NCT and insurance certificates displayed when it had been stopped.
Ms McCullagh, Balcurris Road, Ballymun, Dublin, claimed the gardaí had wrongly seized her car, driven it violently, crashed it, unlawfully impounded it and failed to return it.
She said her partner, a named driver, had set off for work in her car at 8am on December 13th, 2004.
Shortly afterwards, he rang and asked her to bring his driving licence and the insurance certificate for a garda who had stopped him in Queen Street, Dublin.
She said she arrived only to find Robert standing alone with no car and no gardaí.
She then discovered the garda had seized the car, because he claimed not to have time to wait, and it had been crashed into a bollard around the corner.
Following a lunch recess, Mr Conlan-Smyth told the court the case had been settled and could be struck out with an order for Ms McCullagh's legal costs.