The Gazette 1991

GAZETTE

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1991

Retirement of Mr. Justice

Sean Gannon

On 4th December 1990, Mr.

Justice Sean Gannon sat for the

last time, having served as a judge

of the High Court for just a month

short of 18 years. In replying to

tributes from all sides, including

those on behalf of both solicitors

and barristers, the retiring judge ex-

pressed the belief that the interest

of the litigant client was best

served by the separation of the two

branches of the legal profession. He

saw the solicitor and the barrister

as performing separate specialist

functions interdependent upon

each other, with the strength of

each lying in the support given to

the standard and performance of

the other.

The independence of the res-

pective functions of solicitor and

counsel was the underlying con-

cept of Gannon J's. decision in

Dunne -v- O'Neill

(1975), in which

he reviewed early decisions on the

taxation of legal costs and laid

down up-to-date principles in rela-

tion to same. His decision was

adopted and followed in a number

of subsequent decisions of the

High Court and the Supreme Court

on the taxation of costs.

A decision of Gannon J., subse-

quently approved by the Supreme

Court, which has often been cited

in judicial review matter, is

State

(Hea/y) -v- O'Dea

(1976). In the

many State-side applications which

came before him over the years to

review orders of the District Court,

it was always apparent that,

whether he was upholding or

striking-down decisions of the

lower court, Mr. Justice Gannon

always treated the holder of the

office of District Justice with the

respect due to a person of judicial

status with such an important day

to day judicial function to perform.

In his decision in

dune -v- D.P.P.

(1981) Gannon J. took care to

underline that the independence of

the judges of the courts established

by law (i.e. the Circuit and District

Courts) included their independ-

ence from direction (as distinct

from instruction) by judges of the

Superior Courts.

His most recent judicial review

decision in

Cosgrove -v- Legal Aid

Board

(1990) is notable in that it

related to the inadequacy of the

service of the Legal Aid Board by

reason of the lack of adequate

State funding.

For almost his entire period on the

High Court bench, Mr. Justice

Gannon was the Probate judge. Of

its nature, the work of the Probate

list is almost entirely administrative,

with the contentious administration

of estates' issues being dealt with

on the non-jury side or the Chancery

sida Consequently, most of the mat-

ters coming before him in the

Monday morning Probate list were

concerned with technical problems,

which lay almost entirely within the

function of the solicitor. Under the

aegis of Gannon J., practitioners very

soon learned that between the right

way and the wrong way of applying

the relevant law relating to wills

there was no half way!

Apart from his many functions

on the civil side, Mr. Justice

Gannon spent many a term on the

criminal side in the Central Criminal

Court and the Court of Criminal

Appeal. He presided over the then

much publicised "Fairview Park

Case", where the jury decided that

a fatal assault of a young man by

a gang of youths in that Dublin park

was not murder, and where he

imposed suspended sentences on

the accused youths on conviction

for the lesser offence. With a digni-

fied judicial silence Gannon J.

withstood public criticism in Dail

Eireann and elsewhere for "letting

the accused go free", notwith-

standing that the jury, in a rider to

its verdict, had expressly requested

leniency for the several accused.

In more recent times, Mr. Justice

Gannon presided over

the

Divisional Court which confirmed

the extradition of Dominic

McGlinchey and he also was a

member of the Divisional Court

which dealt with the extradition

applications in relation to Dermot

Finnucane and Owen Carron,

which were ultimately decided by

the Supreme Court.

Mr. Jus t i ce Gannon was

educated at Belvedere College,

U.C.D., and King's Inns and was

called to the Bar in Michaelmas

1941. During his more than 30

years as a barrister he practised on

the Midland Circuit and in Dublin,

including many years as a State

prosecutor. He was called to the

Inner Bar in Trinity 1966 and when

appointed to the .High Court on 3rd

January 1973 he was the last judge

so appointed by the late President

Eamon de Valera.

•

N O T

C F

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