Judge rejects Carrick-on-Suir solicitors' application to postpone hearing of defamation case

Former US President Donald Trump has had fewer court applications relating to his litigation before US courts than the current President of the Law Society has brought in defending an alleged defamation of character claim brought against her and her husband by a county Tipperary accountant, a judge was told in Dublin Circuit Civil Court this week. 

Carrick-on-Suir based solicitors Maura Derivan and her husband, Patrick, who are being sued for €50,000 damages by Carrick-on-Suir accountant Bobby Fitzgerald, had asked Judge John O’Connor to have a trial date postponed because it clashed with a conference in Paris, which Ms Derivan felt she had to attend in her official capacity.

Judge O’Connor, having been told the 14-year-old defamation case had been transferred from the South Eastern Circuit to Dublin and mentioned in courts 24 or 25 times, told the Derivans’ legal team: “This case cannot continue in this fashion any longer.”

Although clashing with the annual conference of the International Bar Association in the French capital’s Palais Des Congress from October 29 to November 3, Judge O’Connor said he would allow the fixed trial dates of November 1 and 2 to remain in place.

“It has gone on too long and the dates assigned for the hearing of the case must stand,” he said.

The action was launched against the Derivans by Mr Fitzgerald, a chartered accountant, and head partner of Fitzgerald Fleming Long in Carrick-on-Suir, in 2009. At a sitting of the circuit court earlier this year, the Derivans were criticised for allegedly attempting to frustrate the hearing of the defamation action against them. The couple practice as Derivan Sexton and Co. Solicitors in Carrick-on-Suir 

During the hearing of the Derivans' application to postpone the defamation case hearing on Tuesday, solicitor Neil Breheny for a third defendant, Bernard Brophy, told Judge O’Connor:  “I can think of another president whose litigation has not brought him before the courts as often as President Derivan.”

Mr. Breheny, of Sean Ormond Solicitors, Waterford, objecting “very strenuously” to a change of dates, said notice of the Paris conference had been up on the Law Society’s website long before the November trial dates were allotted.

He said the IBA’s 2024 annual conference in Mexico had already been published on the Law Society’s website. 

The defamation case arises from written correspondence allegedly initiated and published by Derivan Sexton and Co. in matters relating to their client, Mr Brophy, concerning the proposed purchase of a development unit by him and involving Mr Fitzgerald’s company.

A full defence, denying all and any issues relating to the alleged defamation against Fitzgerald, has been entered on behalf of the Derivans and Mr Brophy, who is a plasterer from Owning, Piltown, county Kilkenny and previously referred to as “the man in the middle.”