The Court of Appeal will next June hear an appeal by Ian Bailey's partner Jules Thomas against a decision allowing the Garda Comissioner and State bring a preliminary application over her claim for damages.
The application could lead to large parts, and perhaps all, of her action for damages being struck out.
Ms Thomas initiated proceedings in 2007 seeking damages against the Garda Commissioner and State arising from the investigation into the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in west Cork in late 1996. Her claim was brought on groudns including alleged wrongful arrest and false imprisonment on dates in 1997 and 2000.
A date for the hearing of her action has not yet been fixed and the defendants brought a preliminary application aimed at having most, if not all, of her claims struck out on grounds those are brought outside the applicable six year time limit.
Ms Thomas is separately seeking to be permitted amend her claim to make additional claims concerning her psychological capacity to instruct lawyers before 2007 and to allege gardai continued to engage in “surreptitious” intelligence gathering on her up to 2010, giving her a continuing cause of action of which she only became aware in recent years.
In a report read in court, a psychiatrist who assessed Ms Thomas recently said he believed she has been affected by depressive illness from 1996 until at least 2011 which was likely to have caused an impediment in her mental state, affecting her abiolity to instrcut lawyers.
He said she was subject to “massively stressful” circumstances.
When Ms Thomas’ appeal against the decision to permit a preliminuary issue on the statute point was mentioned at the Court of Appeal yesterday, a date for hearing that appeal was fixed by Mr Justice Peter Kelly for June 1st next.
The appeal court is endeavouring to clear an inherited backlog of hundreds of appeals from the Supreme Court as well as dealing with many new appeals.
The defendants last month secured permission from Mr Justice Hedigan a trial of two preliminary issues.
The first issue is whether Ms Thomas’ case was brought outside the six year legal time limit. The second issue is whether there was excessive delay in bringing it. Ms Thomas claims any delay in bringing her claim is a result of psychiatric illness and “incalculable” damage suffered due to alleged actions of the defendants.
Towards the end of Mr Bailey’s 64 day action last March, the defendants successfully applued to the judge to have large aspects of his case withdrawn from the jury. His remaining claims of conspiracy by some gardai to frame him for murder were rejected by the jury, leaving him facing a legal costs bill of up to €5 million.
