John Farrell SC:John Farrell, senior counsel, who died after a short illness on December 13th aged 69, was a barrister of singular distinction and unique personality.
The eldest son of another John Farrell, a justice of the District Court, he was born in Dublin in 1938. He boarded at Newbridge before going on to University College Dublin where he studied Latin and Irish. He was gold medallist of the Literary and Historical Society. Eschewing the flowery oratory favoured there, he gave speeches that were ordered, dispassionate and mature beyond his years.
He helped to organise the first Irish Times competition for inter-university debaters, so disqualifying himself from taking part in a contest he would almost certainly have won. Confident in his own abilities, he was unusually indifferent to honours or recognition of any sort.
This attitude governed Farrell's career at the bar, to which he was called in 1960 and where he became a senior counsel in 1978. His powers of concise analysis and rapid dispatch won him a niche doing more complicated civil work. He mastered the complexities of pre-trial written pleadings in defamation and became the standing counsel for RTÉ. As the State broadcaster was often wrong-footed, this required a fair amount of skilful grovelling in court on its behalf.
He established himself as the foremost expert at the bar on the law of landlord and tenant. An early success in this sphere was to secure a new lease for Eamonn Andrews Productions at the Gaiety Theatre. He acted as consulting editor of the standard textbook on the subject published in 1990.
In 1994, exhibiting a wider expertise, he published a book of his own on a part of the law of contract called specific performance. It is outstanding among our legal textbooks for its lucidity. As a practitioner, being all too aware of the hazards of litigation before unpredictable judges, he tended to steer clients towards early settlements with firm definitive advice.
In his younger days Farrell was a Fianna Fáil supporter. But punctilious in all things himself, he objected to the late payment of fees that those briefed by the State were then expected to tolerate.
He refused any more State work. Although remaining intensely interested in politics, he forsook party allegiance and the prospects of judicial preferment that went with it. Our jurisprudence is the poorer for not having had him as a judge on our superior courts.
Valuing his independence, Farrell worked from his home on Eglinton Road where he could be with his family. He was a familiar figure in the locality striding out eagerly to deliver briefs by hand to solicitors, generally stopping for a well-earned pint on the way home.
He loved walking his native city. He was also a mighty traveller, departing each January to distant parts of the world. He had an unusually catholic appreciation of music and played chess, bridge and the modern game of Sudoku. He enjoyed food, especially Chinese cuisine, and, to the joy of his devoted wife, children and friends, was a skilled chef.
In a gregarious profession Farrell stood somewhat apart. He was not invariably malleable and was loath to have his time wasted. His indifference to appearances, especially in his latter years, and his individual sense of humour, combined to give him an air of eccentricity. But, among friends, he was an engaging companion whose wide-ranging conversation was exceptionally well informed. Those who knew him best liked him most. He was a loyal man of high standards.
Farrell is survived by his wife Brenda, two daughters and one son.