Denis Riordan Strikes Back

I thought we had heard the last of Denis Riordan! Not so long ago the Limerick IT lecturer — who was once jailed for contempt of the Supreme Court — had two Isaac Wunder orders made against him. That should have — or so I thought — ended his days of appearing in person before the courts.

Back in the day one Mr. Isaac Wunder took several actions against the Hospitals Trust, claiming to be the legitimate owner of a winning ticket in the Sweepstakes. He was subsequently banned from further litigation unless he first obtained the permission of the Supreme Court. This seemed to work against Mr. Wunder but doesn't appear to have deterred Mr. Riordan who infamously took a case in the High Court against all of the then serving members of the Supreme Court, and then proceeded to tell two Supreme Court judges that they were corrupt (hence his brief stint in jail).

Mr. Riordan is a prolific failed lay plaintiff and has appeared before the courts on innumerable occasions. He has failed every single of these actions. This and his apparent contempt for the country’s highest judges has done little for the idea that civic minded citizens are entitled to challenge the government and parliament on issues which matter to the public as a whole but not them in particular. The courts need to move toward the position that only legally represented, non-litigious plaintiffs should have standing to take these kinds of actions, or else a return to once strict standing requirements will become ever more likely.

Barely needless to say, his latest action has been dismissed on all counts yet again. One of his claims was that the Court of Criminal Appeal was invalidly constituted as it had no judges permanently assigned to it. (The CCA is constituted on an ad hoc basis and consists of a Supreme Court judge, a High Court judge and a Circuit Court Judge.) The Supreme Court regretted that Riordan had doubtful standing for challenging the constitutionality of the Court of Criminal Appeal, given that he had never been charged with an indictable offence. "Yet," I can hear them murmur.