Eamon Butterly must pay the legal fees of the Stardust families for a failed court challenge he took – just before the jury began deliberations in the inquest – seeking to block a verdict of unlawful killing, the High Court has ruled on Wednesday.
Mr. Butterly was the manager of the nightclub in Artane, Dublin, where 48 people were killed in a fire on Valentine’s night in 1981.
Just before Easter weekend this year, he applied to the court for permission to bring judicial review proceedings challenging decisions made by the coroner to allow the jury to return a verdict of unlawful killing.
Following the failed bid, the jury made a finding of unlawful killing in each of the 48 deaths. The legal challenge was timed shortly before Dublin City coroner Myra Cullinane began her final address to the jury, following inquest hearings that began in April 2023.
Mr. Butterly’s lawyers had argued a verdict of unlawful killing would be highly prejudicial and would damage his reputation, as it was feared blame could be attributed to him.
However, lawyers for 47 of the 48 victims opposed the application. Lawyers for the coroner told the court it was their client’s preference that she be allowed to proceed with her address to the jury. The matter came before Judge Tony O’Connor, who refused Mr Butterly’s application for both leave to bring the challenge and for the inquest to be put on hold pending the outcome of the challenge.
He said the verdict of unlawful killing was open to a jury, as long as they were properly cautioned and directed to the fact that they could not attribute liability to any named individual.
Families of the Startdust victims. (RollingNews.ie)
In his ruling yesterday, Judge O’Connor noted that immediately after his decision on March 28, the families’ lawyers had applied for their legal costs to be paid by Mr. Butterly. He said he had agreed to hear arguments about this from both sides.
The judge said the families had told him that they had a clear interest in the application and that they had not sought any time in which to prepare for the matter to be heard.
They said there was no objection at the time to them being legally represented, and the approach they took minimized the level of costs incurred and was in ease of all the parties.
Mr. Butterly had countered that the application could have been brought by him alone, and did not require the families’ opinions to be heard.
He complained he had been in a "Catch-22" situation. He said his application was objected to as being premature, but if he had waited until after the verdict he could have been told he should have taken legal action sooner.
He also argued work carried out by the families’ lawyers for the court application was largely already done "by virtue of their appearances and submissions during the relevant parts of the inquest," the judge recalled.
Judge O’Connor ruled: "No matter what way this court looks at the arguments advanced on behalf of the applicant [Mr. Butterly], there was merit in the families engaging solicitors and counsel to represent their interests at the hearing of the leave application. Fairness and justice compel this court to exercise its discretion to direct the applicant to discharge the costs incurred by the families."
He said those costs would be limited to the appearance of one senior counsel, one junior counsel and a solicitor for the families at the hearing of the application on March 27, and at the judgment on March 28.
April 25, 2023: Families of Stardust victims. (RollingNews.ie)
On April 18 this year, after deliberating over 11 days, the inquest panel of seven women and five men delivered their majority findings and verdicts to Dublin District Coroner’s Court. They found that 48 young people, aged between 16 and 27, were unlawfully killed when a fire consumed the Stardust in the early hours of February 14, 1981.
The jury said they were able to establish the cause of the fire as being an electrical fault in the hot press of the dispense bar.
The jury also returned a finding that factors contributing to the spread of the fire included the covering on the seats, the height of the ceiling in the west alcove, and the carpet tiles on the walls.
*This article was originally published on Extra.ie.
Comments