O'Connell v Taxing Master Paul Behan & Ors (Unapproved)

The applicant claims that the High Court ([2020] IEHC 437) erred in refusing his application for leave to seek judicial review of a ruling of the first respondent of 12 July 2019.� That ruling was made in the course of the taxation of costs in proceedings brought by the applicant against inter alia the Building and Allied Trades Union (�BATU�).� The effect of the impugned decision was to refuse the applicant�s application that the first respondent recuse himself from further involvement in that taxation.�

(i) That the applicant had failed to establish a good arguable case that the provisions of Order 99 in question were contrary to the Constitution or European Convention on Human Rights.

(ii) �That as a result of the applicant�s failure to join BATU as a party to these proceedings, his application was improperly constituted, and that he had failed to establish that he had an arguable case that he was entitled to the remaining relief claimed by him in the absence of BATU.

(iii) In the alternative, that the court would exercise its discretion to refuse leave to the applicant (a) because he had failed to join a necessary party to the intended action, (b) taking account of the fact that he did not put before the court the impugned decision and documents subsequent to that decision and (c) that having failed to put those documents before the court, the applicant made submissions to the court that were not consistent with them and which incorrectly characterised the attitude of BATU to the proceedings.

Rolled in to the remaining three paragraphs (c) to (e) are a number of allegations directed to the order of certiorari sought quashing the impugned decision of the first respondent.� They encompass three headings of complaint - a failure to give reasons, a failure to grant access to the applicant to certain information, and bias.� Broken down, the factual allegations underlying this appear six-fold: