The family law case at the centre of an allegedly improper approach to a High Court judge by a fellow member of the bench was a highly acrimonious dispute between two parents involving 28 court appearances over a six-year period.
The presidents of the High Court and Circuit Court carried out an investigation this week into allegations that Mr Justice Henry Abbott was improperly approached by Circuit Court judge Desmond Hogan about the case.
The presidents said the discussion between the two judges, described by Mr Justice Abbott as a “casual conversation” to which he took exception, should not have happened but concluded that the conversation had no influence on rulings in the case.
Queried by the two senior judges, Judge Hogan claimed he had no intention of influencing the outcome of the case by raising it with his colleague. He said he was unable to recall the conversation or how he came by the information that Mr Justice Abbott had made a particular ruling a few days prior to their conversation, but he was satisfied he had not acted on a request from a politician or anyone connected to the case.
Interim barring order
A previous ruling by Mr Justice Abbott in the case, published in July 2011, shows that the proceedings were initiated in 2002, when a woman obtained an interim barring order against her husband, with whom she had three children. The couple later separated and divorced.
In his 60,000-word judgment, Mr Justice Abbott remarked that the history of the marriage had been “punctuated, if not dominated, by an extraordinary number of court appearances”. Between December 2002 and June 2008, the case came up for hearing on 28 occasions and involved a significant number of expert witnesses.
It came before Mr Justice Abbott in January 2009 when the father appealed a number of orders by which a Circuit Court judge refused to give custody and primary care of one of the children to him.
Appropriate access
In his ruling, Mr Justice Abbott instructed that the primary custody and sole care of the child be transferred to the father, with appropriate access for the mother.
In November 2009, the mother applied for a review of the order, but this was rejected by the court.
In a lengthy reflection on the case, Mr Justice Abbott suggested there were aspects of the litigation which “acted to the detriment of the parties and the children”. These included “the determination of the mother to query and undermine any expert who gave an opinion unfavourable to her”.
He accepted the proposition made by counsel for the father that, whether by accident or design, the mother “developed a system of defying court orders for access and allowing time to be lost in the development of the relationship between the children and the father only to consent in fulsome fashion to a renewed and liberal regime of access when brought to heel by a court application on behalf of the father.”
Mr Justice Abbott made a further ruling in the case in July, but this has not yet been published.
