THE JUDGE in the case of two men, each of whom has sued the other for assault, has said that one of the men is lying.
Alan Holmes, Rathdown Drive, Terenure, Dublin, and Martin Curtis, Curryhills, Prosperous, Co Kildare, have opposing claims arising from an incident at Lucan Golf Club. Their barristers, Louis McEntagart for Mr Holmes and Conor Bowman for Mr Curtis, yesterday completed submissions following a three-day trial.
Mr McEntagart outlined how, following a weekly fourball, wagers being offered in the golf club on a televised football match had led to a bloody row breaking out between Mr Holmes and Mr Curtis in the toilets.
He said Mr Holmes claimed Mr Curtis had head-butted him without provocation or warning. Mr Curtis admitted punching Mr Holmes in the face in self-defence.
The row, which had split the club, had led to allegations of conspiracy and perjury on the part of witnesses who had given evidence for Mr Holmes.
Mr McEntagart said that while there had been no witnesses to the assaults claimed and counter-claimed, the court could draw inferences from the evidence of witnesses for both sides.
Mr Bowman said the core issue of Mr Holmes’s case was that without word or warning, he had been “loafed” as he turned from washing his hands in the sink.
He claimed witnesses “put up” by Mr Holmes had deliberately engaged in a concerted conspiracy to tell lies and commit perjury. Witnesses for Mr Curtis had travelled the truth train while Mr Holmes’s witnesses had joined the perjury express. They had lied through their teeth, Mr Bowman said
Judge Joseph Matthews said he found Patrick Carroll, who had walked into the toilets when Mr Holmes and Mr Curtis were “jostling” with each other, a truthful witness.
Mr Carroll had seen no blood at that stage but when he had turned round from the urinal five seconds later there was blood pumping from Mr Holmes. He had neither seen nor heard anything suggestive of a punch or head-butt.
The judge said one of the two combatants was a liar. The issue was who had done what first.
No one had witnessed the fight but there was evidence of blood on the toilet wash basin, walls, floor, ceiling and doors. It had taken three people 10 minutes to clean up the mess. There were also allegations, firmly denied, that Mr Holmes and his witnesses had met in the Lucan Spa Hotel to agree their stories about what had happened and what had been said in the bar before the alleged assaults.