Case Reports

Muslim parents in Switzerland whose daughters were refused an exemption from compulsory mixed swimming lessons by authorities suffered no violation of their article 9 rights (freedom of thought, conscience and religion), judges in the European Court of Human Rights have unanimously ruled. The court

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) will be delivering a Grand Chamber judgment in the case of Hutchinson v the United Kingdom on 17 January 2017 in a case concerning the complaint by a man serving a whole life sentence for murder that his sentence amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment a

A man who falsely imprisoned and robbed an escort in a hotel in Cork has had his sentence reduced from eight years to one of six years imprisonment. At the time of his sentencing, the man, who had carried out the offence along with the accomplice, was already serving a five-year sentence for a simil

Tenants of a number of properties in receivership have been successful in the High Court where they sought the Digital Audio Recording of proceedings in Naas Circuit Court, which had ordered that they vacate properties in Kildare. The tenants’ alleged that the order made was unconstitutional as it

A man who converted his passenger van into a motor vehicle has been successful in the High Court, overturning a finding by the Revenue Commissioners that his vehicle had not been significantly changed from its pre-conversion state and therefore remained subject to a higher excise tax under the Finan

A mother-of-four, who was refused bereavement benefits upon the death of her cohabiting partner of 23 years, has had her application for judicial review dismissed by the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal. The Court overturned the decision of the the High Court, in which Justice Treacy found that the

An order of the High Court granting the Bank of Ireland a summary judgment for €1 million against an 81-year-old woman who stood as guarantor for loans paid to her son's company has been upheld by the Court of Appeal. Delivering the judgment of the three-judge Court, Ms Justice Irvine was satisfie

Court documents should be more readily accessible, an Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union has proposed. Regulation No 1049/2001 obliges the Commission to grant a third party access to the pleadings submitted by a member state, of which it holds a copy, in a case that has a

EU law does not, in principle, prevent a member state from opposing collective redundancies in certain circumstances in the interests of the protection of workers and of employment. However, under such national legislation, which must in that case seek to reconcile and strike a fair balance between,

Discrimination resulting in the denial of a basic education is a sufficiently severe violation of basic human rights so as to amount in law to persecution, the Supreme Court has found. In the circumstances of the particular case involving a Serbian child of Ashkali ethnicity, Mr Justice Clarke found

Ireland must recover the sum of €8 per passenger from airlines benefiting from unlawful state aid because the difference between the lower and normal rates of the Irish air travel tax constitutes unlawful aid which must be recovered regardless of the benefit the airlines actually derived from the

A 39-year-old man given a five-year sentence following his conviction for sexual assault of his younger sister over a period of six years in the 1990s has failed in his challenge to the severity of his sentence in the Court of Appeal. Delivering the judgment, Mr Justice Edwards rejected the argument

EU law precludes national legislation that prescribes general and indiscriminate retention of data except in the fight against serious crime, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled. In Case C-698/15, Mr Tom Watson, Mr Peter Brice and Mr Geoffrey Lewis brought actions challenging the UK

A Commission decision to dismiss a request for review of a market authorisation decision on products containing genetically modified soybeans has been backed by the General Court because the parties making the request failed to refute the Commission’s findings that: 1) there are no significant dif

A woman who tripped on the steps of an air bridge as she disembarked from a flight arriving at Dublin Airport has seen her negligence claim against the Dublin Airport Authority overturned by the Court of Appeal. In the High Court, the trial judge had accepted that the absence of wall signs warning p