A former Dublin County Registrar had adopted an unnecessarily aggressive, threatening and litigious approach in a development dispute with her next-door neighbours, a judge has decided.
Judge Jennifer O’Brien, throwing out Rita Considine’s €60,000 damages claim, said it was clear her neighbours, Michael and Anne Flanagan and their daughter, Sinead Flanagan, had, from the outset, made efforts towards resolving the dispute in which Ms Considine alleged damage to her home on Home Farm Road, Drumcondra in Dublin.
The judge said in the Circuit Civil Court it was notable that Ms Considine had refused to engage in mediation and she accepted the defendants’ contention that Ms Considine’s conduct showed a determination to pursue the claim to trial.
“This is a most unfortunate approach to take to any dispute, least of all a dispute between neighbours,” Judge O’Brien told Ms Considine and her solicitor husband David Christie, both of whom were in court to hear the reserved judgment, which followed a nine-day trial of claim and counter claim, mainly by experts.
Ms Considine had claimed damages for the demolition of a wall between the two properties, the butchering of a Leylandi hedge, rising damp in her garage and hazardous and dangerous interference with a pathway.
Judge O’Brien said the correspondence which followed the early construction events made for difficult reading and noted a same-day deadline set in the first letter from Ms Considine had been most unreasonable in all of the circumstances.
Dismissing her claim with an order for costs in favour of the Flanagans, Judge O’Brien said the defendants were not in a position to remedy matters as no consent had been forthcoming from Ms Considine to carry out these works.
Ms Considine had admitted having taken no action to reinstate her property and therefore had failed to mitigate her alleged damage or loss.
The judge said Ms Considine claimed there had been a formal agreement between the parties with regard to proposed development works at the Flanagan property but nothing had been reduced to writing.
She quoted the opinion of Paul Anthony McDermott SC who had opined: “Generally good neighbours will assist each other without ever imagining that they are creating legally binding relations. One would expect the courts to be slow to permit the black letter principles of contract law to cross the garden hedge.”
The judge noted that Ms Considine had been unhappy with the work on the foundation of a dividing wall and immediately called for cessation of further work.
Ted Harding SC and Eamon Marray SC, who appeared with Hennessy and Perrozzi Solicitors, for the Flanagans, opposed the granting of a stay pending consideration by Ms Considine’s legal team of an appeal.
Judge O’Brien granted a 21-day stay on her orders.
