Prolonging the Agony

The government has - in the cases involving PMPA, ICI and the alleged "IRA money" - shown itself capable of urgent measures when it believes them warranted. Four years later the Stardust case drags painfully on.

Charlie Haughey was shocked and appalled at the tragedy. He walked through the burnt out shell of the Stardust and said that some of the dead were known to him. He visited all the hospitals, where many of the victims were in intensive care. "It is very harrowing for the parents, many of whom live in my own parish, as it were," the Taoiseach said.

Minister for Health Michael Woods was one of the first public figures to arrive at the morgue to sympathise with relatives. Garret FitzGerald said he was appalled at the magnitude of the tragedy.

On the Tuesday after the fire, politicians from all the parties as well as churchmen of every creed piled into Our Lady of Mercy Church, Artane, for the special requiem mass. There was a special national day of mourning.

A week after the forty-eight died, the last eight victims were buried. Six of them could not be identified. The politicians came to the funeral; two Fianna Fail councillors managed to squeeze into the front row reserved for the immediate families of the dead.

The Tribunal of Inquiry soaked up the publicity over the fire. The trauma of the relatives and injured was forrgotten as lawyers, barristers and exxperts sought to decide the causes.

One and a half years after the fire, the Report of the Tribunal of Inquiry said that the fire was "probably" malicious. The relatives of the dead and injured started to put their claims for compensation together for the . courts. It is now four and a half years since the fire, and as yet, not one case has come into the High Court. The civil litigation process lies paralysed in a complicated maze of delays over costs, appeals over documents, defences not being filed and solicitors with their cases ready but reluctant to incur the costs and work of being the first to bring their case into court.

The list of cases due to come under jury actions in the High Court in the next term shows that number 883, fifth on the list, is that of. Grice -v-

Silver Swan t/a Stardust. It is expected that this case will be adjourned, as it has been on several occasions before this, and that the first case to deal with the compensation claims for the victims of the Stardust will not come up until several months later.

There are 245 writs issued for the Stardust claims. There are forty-two solicitors acting on those cases.

Liam Lysaght & Company have 117 cases, Tony Hanahoe, of Michael Hanahoe & Company has fifty cases, Evanna Killeen of Killeen & Company has eight, and the rest are divided out in ones and twos between the other thirty-nine solicitors.

There are six defendants: Dublin Corporation, The State, Eamon Buttterly , Patrick B utterly, Silver Swan Ltd and Scotts Foods Ltd.

The usual length of time to get a case to the High Court at present is two years, one year to go through a system of pleadings, and one year in the queue in the High Court waiting for your case to come up. Most of the delays over the Stardust cases concern problems arising at various stages of the pleadings, between the plain tiff and the defendants.

A typical High Court case goes . through several stages of pleaddings before it gets into the queue. The first stage is the issuing of a writ, or plenary summons, by the plaintiff. This is a simple document stating the plaintiff's intention to proceed with a case against the named defendants. The defendant issues an appearance. Next, the plaintiff issues a statement of claim, a more complicated docuument usually issued by a barrister, making out the claims that the plainntiff intends pursuing. The defendant issues a defence to this statement of. claim. Following this, the plaintiff puts in a notice of trial to the High Court, and goes in to the queue.

If the defendant is delaying in issuing a defence, the plaintiff can go to court to have it issued. Also, the plaintiff may have to appeal to court to get the defendant to hand over documents necessary for the case, called notices, or documents, or disscovery. In the Stardust claims, there have been delays in lodging statements of claim, defences, and receiving docuuments of discovery.

Solicitors acting for the plaintiffs are now at various stages in the pleaddings procedure, arrdjsorne cases have been set down for trial in the next term. Some of the plaintiffs' cases have been delayed because of defennces not being filed, and the defendants, principally the State and Dublin Corrporation, have been taken to court by the plaintiffs wishing to acquire documents that the defendants do not wish to hand over.

The principal solicitor involved in this delay is Liam Lysaght, whose 117 cases involve some of the more seriously injured victims.

Liam Lysaght first came to the attention of the relatives and injured in the days following the fire. He attended meetings that were being held in the local pub, the Black Sheep. He spoke at meetings and offered his legal advice for free.

When the Tribunal of Inquiry was established, the government agreed to pay the legal costs incurred for the relatives and appointed two solicitors for them, Maire Bates of the Coolock Community Law Centre, and Tony Hanahoe, former Dublin footballer, of Michael E. Hanahoe & Company. Tony' Hanahoe is presently dealing with fifty clients in the compensation claims.

Liam Lysaght was chosen by the relatives, many of them feeling that they wanted to appoint their own solicitor. When the Tribunal was over, they felt that since he had been innvolved in the cases, he would have all the knowledge of the Tribunal.

In a written reply in the Dail in Novem ber 1981, Minister for the Environment Peter Barry, stated that Michael E. Hanahoe & Company received £23,620 in fees for the Tribunal of Inquiry. Liam T. Lysaght received £12,740. At the time some fees were still outstanding.

Mr Lysaght took Dublin Corporaation and the State to court in July last to get possession of documents relating to the fire advisor in the Department of the Environment, Mr John Connolly, and Dublin Corporaation. The judge in that case gave the State and Dublin Corporation six months to produce the documents that Mr Lysaght required for his plainntiff s case.

The issue of the delay came up in February last, when Liam Lysaght sent ninety of. his clients a letter seeking £1,000 from them in order to pursue their cases. The people involved had no idea at what stage their' cases were at, and why they were taking so long. They felt that the request for payment of this sum was unfair.

In the letter, Mr Lysaght outlined arrangements he had made for his clients to take out a loan of £ 1,000 from the Allied Irish Bank in Dame Street, Dublin, which he had guarannteed. This loan, which was signed for by eighty people went towards costs incurred in preparing the cases, accor- .•.. ding to the letter.

Mr Lysaght asked his clients to agree to the loan "immediately to avoid any delay in the progress of your case," and broke down the figure as follows:

Garda report £20.00. Barristers fees £300.00. Doctors reports £200.00. Engineers reports £500.00. Stamp duties £100.00.

It is not usual for solicitors to charge clients for barristers fees before a case comes up in court.

According to this breakdown, Mr Lysaght was getting separate doctors, engineers, and garda reports for each of his clients' cases, despite the fact that many of them are similar.

Mr' Lysaght told journalists afterrwards that he was out of pocket by £60,000 as a result of the work done on the Stardust cases so far. Many of Mr Lysaght's clients are unemployed as a result of the injuries they received, and several are still attending several doctors over injuries.

In March, John Keegan, whose two daughters died in the Stardust fire, began to make efforts to get the Starrdust relatives committee active again. By May, a new group of relatives, the Stardust Victims Committee, had been formed, with John Keegan as chairrman. They wrote a series of letters to politicians and the legal profession asking for help to speed up their cases in the courts. They got no satissfactory answers.

The Taoiseach said he had passed on their letter to the Minister for Justice, Michael Noonan. The Minister for Justice did not think it appropriate to meet the committee. Their solicitor, Liam Lysaght, said that the rules of sub judice precluded solicitors from discussing their clients' actions in pubblic when he was asked to attend their meetings. The president of the High Court, Justice Liam Hamilton, told Mr Keegan that he would give favourable consideration to any cases that came up in the High Court.

At the time of the fire, medical cards were issued to the injured for their expenses. Since then, many of those cards have been withdrawn.

Lord Mayor Michael O'Halloran mid a public meeting that at that "cage, there were 129 statements of claim outstanding. A question to the Corporation in August returned the information that the Corporation had entered defences in eighty-eight cases. The Minister for Justice had already said that the State had entered seventyynine defences. Notice of trial had been received by the State in one case starrred in February 1984.

At the same public meeting, Michael o 'Halloran said that the delays were due to the inefficiency of the legal profession. By the following day, the Incorporated Law Society had treated nis remarks as a complaint. Mr Chris Mahon of the Society told Magill that they had contacted all the solicitors involved in the cases. "There does not appear to be any unjustifiable delay in the cases," he said. "The first case will probably come up in the next term, out how soon I do not know."

Magill contacted some of the soliicitors involved with the plaintiffs' cases, to ascertain what stage they ere at, and any reasons for delays.

Thomas Loomas has two High Court cases on his books, and one has ceen set down; he expects it to come up next April or May.

Tony Hanahoe, who has fifty clients, said he has no statements of claim outstanding, and that all of his cases are up to date. "Basically, there are a lot of people waiting for a few solicitors to make the running. Most of the cases will be up in November or January. Once the first case is settled, a lot of points will be ironed out. But that case could be appealed to the Supreme Court."

Mr Hanahoe did not think that the rases had been overly delayed, but admitted that they could have been better organised from the start.

"If all the parties had joined togee~er at the start and put forward a test case, it could all have been over sooner."

Dominic Dowling has one client involved and says that he is ready to set down his case, but is waiting for the first case to be decided. Like many solicitors with a small practice, he could not afford to run a case in the High Court that would be lengthy and complicated.

He told Magill that responsibility should have been taken to run a single action from the beginning. "The Law Society should have taken it upon themselves to get people to run a single action. This holding back is serving no purpose, and it did not benefit anybody at the end of the day"

Tom Halligan of Kevin Gaffney & ompany has two clients with claims pending. The statements of claim have been filed, and he expects to be able to set them down for trial in the next term, to come up about twelve months later. The injuries of his two clients are not as serious as some others, and he is waiting for someone with more serious injuries to go through the courts first.

Mr Liam Lysaght was out of the country and therefore unavailable for comment. His office confirmed that their first case is that of Jimmy Fitzzpatrick, one of the most severely innjured victims of the fire. His office also confirmed that Mr Lysaght is appealing to the High Court to get documents of discovery from the State and Dublin Corporation.

Evanna Killeen, of Killeen & Co, has eight clients in the Stardust group, including that of one of the most seriously injured, Lar Stout. She was not prepared to comment on the proogress of her cases to Magill, but it is . understood that some of her stateements of claim for her cases are outtstanding.

Mary Bradley has one client, a case she took over from Liam Lysaght's office. She is aware that the case is at the stage where it could be set down for trial, but she has not yet received the file on the case from Mr Lysaght.

When the funerals of the fortyyeight victims were over, the newspaper reports concentrated their attention on the Tribunal of Inquiry, its terms of reference, and the inadeequacy of the fire regulations.

In the community where the relaatives of the dead and the survivors lived, the tragedy lived on. The victims of the Stardust were neglected by the official bodies who should have taken care of their welfare, according to Tom O'Meara, who was appointed the administrator of the Lord Mayor's fund for the victims and their families. A trust was set up to deal with the money that came from the public, some £400,000, which went initially to pay for headstones and funeral expenses for the families.

Tom O'Meara was one of the few people specifically assigned to help these people. Michael Woods as Minisster for Health, sent a person for a while to Coolock to deal directly with claims for unemployment and dissability benefit.

Despite the fact that it was not specifically his brief, Tom 0 'Meara became, in his own words, a priest, psychologist, social worker and general helper rolled into one. At the time he was twenty years old, with no training for this kind of work.

Nobody came to tell them where to get help, he said, not even the priests from the area. "They had to look after themselves," he said. "There were deep traumatic experiences on a mass scale. The people need skin specialists, psychologists, doctors, speecialists in burns. They had to do it all themselves. "

Forty-eight died. 214 suffered innjuries, many very serious. Some 250 families were affected. The majority of them came from one area in Coolock near the Stardust complex, and they were from families where unemployyment was high and incomes low, and where services in the area were already inadequate. Of the forty-eight who died, nine were the sons or daughters of deserted or separated wives, and several of the dead were parents.

The deaths in the families caused huge repercussions, from feelings of guilt at the deaths of the children, to drink problems caused by the psychoological traumas, to financial problems caused by the loss of the wage-earner in the family, to the inability to return to work because of the grief and disstress of the deaths.

In the four and a half years since the tragedy, there are still some surrvivors attending doctors. John Keeegan's daughter, Antoinette, still attends four hospitals, has lost the use of one lung, and still suffers the effects of her burns. Lar Stout, whose hands were badly burned, receives £72 a week dissability benefit, and cannot return to work in his chosen profession as a painter.

At the time of the fire, medical cards were issued to the injured for their expenses. Since then, many of those cards have been withdrawn, desspite a promise at the time that they would have those cards for a consiiderable time. The survivors are still appealing the decision to remove cards from some of the people still attending hospitals and doctors, and in a reply by the Department of Health to a letter seeking the reinstatement of the cards, it was said that the Minister was satisfied that the arguments being applied to the survivors of the Stardust disaster concerning removal of their medical cards "are fair and reasonable and take fully into account the nature and extent of their difficulties."

Since February 1981, families have broken up, people have lost their jobs, and even those not in the fire on the night have had nervous breakdowns.' All of this has gone on in the knowwc}edge that nothing has been done either to compensate them for their sufferring, and more importantly that nothing has been done to stop something like this happening again. At least if trageedies like this did not happen again, it would have meant that the deaths were not in vain, said one relative.

The paralysis in the progress of their claims through the legal system has made the Stardust victims cynical. They doubt that anything will be done, and feel they will never get their compensation. This view has been reinforced by the actions and decisions of the courts since the fire.

Firstly, there was the decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions several days after the publication of the Tribunal report, that there were insufficient grounds to bring criminal proceedings against the owners or others for a case alleging negligence resulting in manslaughter.

Secondly, there was the renewal, at the end of 1981, of the bar licence for the Lantern Rooms, a section of the Stardust complex, by the Circuit Court to the owners of the complex, the Butterlys. The renewal was granted despite repeated objections from the relatives. A High Court injunction was granted against the picketers at the Lantern Rooms when they opened.

In late July 1983, the owners of the Stardust settled their Claim for compensation for malicious injuries ·when Judge O'Hanrahan in Dublin District Court decided that the fire was started maliciously. The Butterlys. and Dublin Corporation settled on a' figure for compensation of £581,496, after the judge had decided on a reinnstatement figure of £600,000 three weeks earlier. The judge commented. that all those involved in the negotiaations had shown common sense in avoiding a protracted legal battle in the court to decide damages.

The speed of this settlement was to contrast sharply with the seemingly never-ending delay over the compensaation claims of the victims of the fire.

The delay over the compensation claims could have been avoided. The Incorporated Law Society, the governning body of the solicitors, could have called all the solicitors involved togeether to ensure that a single test case was chosen, and put through the courts in as quick a time as possible. This test case could then have been the basis for the settlement of the other claims.

There are six defendants in these claims, and each is strenuously making defences to the claims being issued by the victims. It is normal procedure for both Dublin Corporation and the State to make strong defences to claims, esspecially when it involves a large amount of money, as these cases will.

Liam Lysaght's office has confirmed that some of his cases are being deelayed because of appeals over docuuments of discovery, with Dublin Corrporation and the State. This means that documents necessary for Mr Lysaght's case to prove negligence on the part of the State and Dublin Corrporation are not being given to him, and he has had to appeal to the High Court to get them. The documents in question concern communication beetween the fire advisor in the Departtment of the Environment, John Connnolly, and Dublin Corporation. Mr Lysaght's appeal came up in late July, and the judge ordered the State and Dublin Corporation to surrender those documents in six months.

Should the State and Dublin Corrporation be found liable, there is no certainty that compensation will be awarded automatically. Dublin Corrporation can cite Section 5 of the Fire Brigades Act 1940 in which Section 2 exonerates their necessity to accept liability.

The Stardust victims committee are to continue their campaign to get their cases over, and to get compensation. At a fund-raising dance last week, John Keegan thanked the many people who had come to support them, and who were helping them "fight the politicians. "

The lack of action by the politiicians now contrasts sharply with their concern and attention in the days after the fire. The Taoiseach paid tribute to the fire services, and to those who had tried to save others. Minister for the Environment Ray Burke pledged speedy action on the Stardust findings. Mrs Catherine McGuinness in the Senate said "We must not let this be a nine-day tragedy until some other tragedy comes along and puts it out of our minds."

Suggestions made by Charles Haugghey in the Dail on June 6th last have not been taken up by Minister for Jusstice Michael Noonan. The Minister was asked to accept in principle that he should intervene in the problem. Haughey asked the Minister to consider the proposal to bring the compensaation claims to the criminal injuries tribunal, in which the State was puttting aside £4 million, and through a law officer provided by the State, to get the families compensation as quickly as possible.

Mr Haughey also proposed that a special court or special sitting of the High Court be set aside for these cases, on a once-off basis.

Michael Noonan's reply was that he would have the questions raised, "examined as a matter of urgency," and said, "but I should make it clear that this does not imply any committment on my part.

"We all share the Deputy's concern and we should bend our will and our minds to seeking to solve this problem because, as the Deputy pointed out, if all other systems fail this House is the last resort and the Government must be the instrument of this House in providin g justice. " •