The Supreme Court has found that a tenant in local authority housing who sought judicial review of her eviction from her family home is entitled to damages. Issuing a joint judgment, the Supreme Court overturned the High Court’s refusal to grant relief to Ann Moore. It was held that Ms Moore was evicted by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council (the Council) on foot of a warrant for eviction obtained in a “fundamentally defective manner”.
By way of background, Ms Moore and her husband had been tenants in their local authority home in Loughlinstown since 1993. The tenants were in rent arrears, and the Council obtained a possession order in 2008. In 2010, a warrant for possession was sought by the Council; this was executed by a sheriff. The Moore family’s application to have the order for possession set aside in the District Court was dismissed, leading to High Court proceedings whereby the trial judge accepted that there was no lawful basis for the warrant, but exercised the Court’s inherent jurisdiction to refuse to grant relief to the applicants. Ms Moore appealed this decision to the Supreme Court.
It was found as a matter of law that Ms Moore’s eviction was unlawful as it breached District Court (Ejectment) Rules 1999. Those rules stipulate where an order for possession has been made more than 6 months prior to the application for a warrant for possession, the application for the warrant must be made on notice to the tenant. Here, 16 months had elapsed between the order for possession and the Council’s application for a warrant - Ms Moore was never notified. The Court found that no satisfactory explanation for this “significant breach of legal process” had been given by the Council at trial.
It was held that this rendered the warrant for possession defective by reason of the Council’s “complete failure” to invoke the proper jurisdiction of the District Court, which denied Ms Moore the opportunity to be heard by the District Court. This in turn deprived Ms Moore of her home in a manner inconsistent with the protection of the dwelling under Article 40.5 of the Constitution, and the European Convention of Human Rights’ Article 8 (right to privacy and family life).
Emphasising that the fundamental value at stake in the proceedings was the rule of law, the Court held that there would have to be a “significant countervailing factor” to jutify a refusal to grant any relief to Ms Moore, and no such factor existed on the facts at hand. Ms Moore conceded that it would be inappropriate to seek an order returning her to her home. The Court awarded declaratory relief and damages at the level of principle. The amount of damages is to be decided at a later date.
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