Eugenie Houston v Leonie Reynolds, Ireland and The Attorney General

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Court: High Court
• Judgment Date: 05 February 2025
• Neutral Citation: [2025] IEHC 58
• Docket Number: [Record No. 2020/8318P]

Between:

Eugenie Houston

Plaintiff

and

Leonie Reynolds, Ireland And The Attorney General

DEFENDANTS

[2025] IEHC 58

[Record No. 2020/8318P]

THE HIGH COURT

Isaac Wunder order – Abuse of process – Proportionality – Defendants seeking an Isaac Wunder order – Whether the relief sought was balanced and proportionate

Facts: The second and third defendants, Ireland and the Attorney General (the applicants), applied to the High Court for an Isaac Wunder order. They sought to restrain the plaintiff, Ms Houston, from issuing proceedings, in the absence of an order of the President of the High Court or a Judge of the High Court nominated by the President granting leave to issue such proceedings, against any past or present Judge or Registrar of the courts, Ireland, any past or present Minister for Justice or Attorney General, the Courts Service or any employee of the Courts Service, any past or present member of the legal profession, or “such other persons and/or classes of persons as the Court may determine should be identified”. The applicants confirmed that the order was being sought on a prospective basis only. The plaintiff sought to argue that: the application was “an abuse of power by the applicants for the benefit of their allies and supporters”; the motion was brought on behalf of persons “in this action in which they are not parties” and “by persons and entities without standing: and without any basis in law”; “[t]he applicants have no standing at all”; and “the motion is an abuse of process”.

Held by Quinn J that, to a large extent, the plaintiff had not engaged with the arguments made by the applicants. He held that it would have been open to the plaintiff to put evidence before the court to show that the various proceedings which she had initiated but not prosecuted were brought bona fide and in pursuance of a legitimate objective; she had not done so. In such circumstances, he inferred that she would, if left unchecked, continue the pattern of pursuing frivolous and vexatious litigation. He noted that the courts have repeatedly emphasised that the court - as Noonan J put it in Fitzsimons v Bank of Scotland Plc & Anor. [2019] IECA 336 - “must also have regard to protecting its own processes from abuse, which result in scarce court resources being wasted to the detriment of other parties with genuine claims”. Quinn J held that the conduct of the plaintiff, in particular in repeatedly issuing proceedings without any reasonable grounds, seeking to re-litigate or “roll forward” matters or issues which had been conclusively determined, making scurrilous and outrageous allegations which had no foundation (often against persons who were not parties to the litigation or had no connection with it), making repeated and unjustified applications to judges to recuse themselves, and in circumstances where she acknowledged that she did not have the resources to discharge any of the costs orders made against her, justified the granting of an order which would act as a “screening mechanism” and ensure that she would litigate in future only bona fide causes of action which do not involve any of the aforesaid abuses of the courts’ system.

Quinn J held that, on the basis of the evidence presented to the court and an examination of the various pleadings, judgments, orders, correspondence and transcripts relating to the various proceedings initiated by the plaintiff, the circumstances amply justified the imposition of an Isaac Wunder order in the terms sought by the applicants. He considered the relief sought to be balanced and proportionate.

Relief granted.

JUDGMENT of Mr Justice Mark Sanfey delivered on the 5 ^th day of February 2025.

Introduction

1 This judgment concerns an application by the second and third named defendants for a litigation restriction order – or, as it is commonly known, an Isaac Wunder Order – in which the applicants seek an order restraining the plaintiff from issuing proceedings “against any of the persons and/or classes of persons and/or potential defendants / respondents identified in [the schedule to the notice of motion] in the absence of an Order of the President of the High Court or a Judge of the High Court nominated by the President of the High Court granting leave to issue such proceedings.”

2 For convenience, I shall refer in this judgment to the second and third named defendants collectively as ‘the defendants’, although it should be noted that the first named defendant took no part in the present application.

3 The classes of persons or entities in respect of whom the order is sought are set out as follows in the schedule to the notice of motion:

Schedule

(a) Any person who holds or has held the office of Judge of the District Court and/or Judge of the Circuit Court and/or Judge of the High Court and/or Judge of the Court of Appeal and/or Judge of the Supreme Court;

(b) any person who holds or has held the office of Registrar of the District Court and/or Registrar of the Circuit Court and/or Registrar of the High Court and/or Registrar of the Court of Appeal and/or Registrar of the Supreme Court;

(c) the Minister for Justice, Ireland and/or the Attorney General and/or any person who holds or has held the offices of Minister for Justice and/or Attorney General;

(d) the Courts Service and/or any employee of the Courts Service;

(e) any member of the legal profession, including any person who is or was a practising barrister or solicitor; and

(f) such other persons and/or classes of persons as the court may determine should be identified in this schedule.

4 The notice of motion issued on 09 February 2023 and was grounded on a substantial affidavit sworn on behalf of the defendants on 09 February 2023 by Natalie Hayes, a solicitor in the Office of the Chief State Solicitor. Further affidavits were sworn by Ms Hayes on 17 April 2023, and by John Hiney, also a solicitor in the Chief State Solicitor's Office, on 07 March 2023, 20 April 2023 and 24 April 2023. The purpose of these affidavits was primarily to update the court in relation to correspondence passing between the parties. Further affidavits were sworn in these proceedings by Ms Hayes and Ms Houston respectively, although this exchange of affidavits related to issues arising from a separate application by the defendants.

5 This latter application comprised an application (‘the dismissal application’) by the defendants inter alia to strike out the plaintiff's plenary summons and statement of claim and/or to dismiss the plaintiff's action on the basis that the pleadings disclosed no reasonable cause of action and/or the action was frivolous and/or vexatious. The application was prosecuted in October and December 2023; on 07 February 2024, I delivered a written judgment in which I acceded to the application: see [2024] IEHC 64. On 13 February 2024, I heard submissions in relation to the orders to be made, and made an order pursuant to the inherent jurisdiction of the court dismissing the proceedings. An order for costs in favour of the defendants was made. At the request of counsel for the defendants, I agreed to place a stay on these orders so that the present application could be prosecuted.

6 The present application came on for hearing on 26 June 2024. It was not possible to conclude the case on the following day. The matter was listed for resumption on three separate occasions before the end of Trinity Term; on each occasion, the plaintiff maintained that she was too unwell to participate.

7 Ultimately, the hearing to conclude the application took place on 19 December 2024. The plaintiff swore an affidavit on 18 December 2024 setting out her position. The defendants took no exception to the filing of this affidavit, notwithstanding that it was delivered well outside the time for service stipulated by the court.

8 Both sides proffered written submissions. The defendants' submissions were extremely extensive, and counsel sought and received the permission of the court to exceed the usual limit of 10,000 words. The plaintiff's submissions on the other hand were only two pages long and, although delivered after receipt of the defendants' submissions and the oral submissions in court by counsel for the defendants, did not engage with the detail of the submissions made by the defendants.

Background: Houston v Doyle

9 The events which have led to the current application have been set out in numerous judgments of this Court and the Court of Appeal. In my judgment on the dismissal application at [2024] IEHC 64, I set out at paragraphs 24 to 32 the circumstances of the proceedings in ‘ Eugenie Houston v. Wendy Doyle practising under the style and title of Wendy Doyle Solicitor, High Court Record No. 2017/6661P’ (‘ Houston v Doyle’ or ‘ Houston v Doyle No. 3’). In the present proceedings, Ms Houston was severely critical of the conduct by the first named defendant of the Houston v Doyle No. 3 proceedings in the High Court. The Court of Appeal found those criticisms to be unfounded, save in one respect; that court allowed Ms Houston's appeal against the Isaac Wunder Order made against her by the High Court: see [2020] IECA 289.

10 When the judgment was delivered by this Court on the dismissal application, indicating that the present proceedings would indeed be dismissed, the second and third named defendants indicated that they wished to prosecute that portion of their application which sought an Isaac Wunder Order against Ms Houston, and sought and were granted a stay on the dismissal order for that purpose. The application for the Isaac Wunder Order proceeded as outlined above.

11 The Houston v Doyle No. 3 proceedings were in fact the third set of proceedings initiated by Ms Houston against Ms Doyle. There had previously been proceedings in the High Court [Record No. 2014/3904P, ‘ Houston v Doyle No. 1’] and in the District Court [‘ Houston v GD Gendist and Wendy...