A 20-year-old student who claimed her former employer had viciously assaulted her was told by a judge she had deliberately provoked a row at a disco.
Judge Liam Devally said that on a night in the Garda Boat Club, Dublin, when people were drinking too heavily, Ms Gillian Walsh had triggered a series of events which had ended in a vicious assault on her former boyfriend, Mr Niall Geoghegan.
Ms Walsh, of Belgrove Lawn, Chapelizod, Dublin, had sued her neighbour and former employer, Mr John Cooney, for up to £30,000 damages for alleged assault.
Mr Niall Durnin, for Mr Cooney, told the court that while his client had been convicted of assaulting Mr Geoghegan, for which he had received a one-month suspended sentence, he denied assaulting Ms Walsh.
The court heard that following a scuffle between Mr Cooney and Mr Geoghegan in the boat club in January 1999, Geoghegan had been followed and beaten with a terracotta plant pot near his home.
Dismissing the claim that Ms Walsh had been assaulted by Mr Cooney both inside and outside the boat club, Judge Devally said she started "an entire succession of events."
He said Ms Walsh and Mr Cooney were to meet in the employment appeals court within days of the boat club disco over a dispute about holiday pay. "Her bete noir was at one end of the bar and she was at the other. None of this would have happened if she had not gone over and bumped Mr Cooney in the arm causing a drink to be spilled over another lady."
He ordered Ms Walsh to pay £500 towards Mr Cooney's costs in defending her claim.