SUPREME COURT APPEAL IN REFERENDUM CHALLENGE

Brophy's Law Blog

We act for petitioner Ms Joanna Jordan in her challenge to the outcome of the Children Referendum. We attended the High Court last Friday when Mr Justice McDermott gave his judgment in this important case. 

Mr Justice McDermott granted leave for our client to present her petition to challenge the provisional referendum certificate. He accepted that the petitioner had established a fair bona fide issue to be tried. He was also satisfied that the petitioner had raised a serious issue to be tried that the government information campaign had the potential to materially affect the result of the Referendum as a whole. 

Mr Justice McDermott declined however to grant the petition. The Judge was not satisfied that on the balance of probabilities the evidence showed that the wrongful conduct of the Government in their information campaign materially affected the result of the Referendum as a whole. 

Last Friday, we confirmed our petitioner’s instructions to appeal the decision of Mr Justice McDermott to dismiss the petition. We immediately sought a stay on the Order of the High Court to enable our client to lodge her Notice of Appeal with the Supreme Court. The stay was essential in order to avoid the provisional referendum certificate being confirmed and the Amendment to the Constitution passing into law. In such circumstances, our client would have been denied a right to appeal and her challenge would have been moot. 

The High Court granted us a stay on the Order for a period of two weeks. Today, Thursday, we filed a Notice of Appeal with the Supreme Court on behalf of the petitioner. We also made a application for a priority hearing to the Supreme Court this morning, that was granted by Chief Justice Denham. Chief Justice Denham confirmed that the stay will be extended until the conclusion of the Supreme Court appeal. Unfortunately the Court indicated this morning that the hearing of the Supreme Court appeal will not take place until 2014.

Brophy Solicitors