The longest-running High Court hearing - which involves an assessment of damages to be paid arising out of a fire in a plastics plant in Co Wicklow - resumed on its 223rd day yesterday and is expected to last into the New Year.

In June 1995, plastics firm Superwood won a Supreme Court appeal against a High Court decision in 1991 which had rejected its claim for compensation against a number of insurance companies following the 1987 fire at its plant in Bray, Co Wicklow.

The Supreme Court awarded costs of more than £2 million for the hearing up to then to Superwood and returned the case to the High Court for an assessment of damages. The costs of the present hearing are also expected to run into millions of pounds.

In the High Court in 1991, following a hearing which went on for 116 days, Mr Justice Rory O'Hanlon, since retired, delivered a 423-page judgment in which he rejected Superwood's claim. The Supreme Court then heard an appeal against that decision over a period of 16 days in 1995.

The present hearing opened before Mr Justice Thomas Smyth in 1997 and has been going on at intervals. Before the summer, it had adjourned until this week.

Superwood's compensation claim had been repudiated by the insurance companies on grounds of fraud or a claim exaggerated so excessively as to lead to the inference that it could not have been made honestly. The Supreme Court held that the repudiation by the insurers of the insurance policy was invalid.

Superwood was established in 1981 by its chairman, Mr Richard Bunyan, a production manager; and by Mr Desmond Finnegan, who had a background in marketing and manufactured products from waste plastics. Its Bray premises were destroyed by fire on October 26th, 1987.

Superwood sued Sun Alliance Insurance Group, Prudential Assurance Co Ltd, Church and General Insurance Co Ltd and Lloyds. In July 1998, the Supreme Court allowed Lloyds to implement a settlement of its dispute with Superwood.