Constructive Notice: Where to point the finger?

Our entire national Economy collapsed and we still don’t get it; banks are at the heart of our wealth. Mere punitive legislation, mergers and recapitalisation will do nothing for our patient; we are applying a plaster on an infected wound.

In Ireland we make law two ways: either judicially or through the Oireachtas (although many, in an attempted support of the express provision of our Constitution in Article 15, namely that only the Oireachtas has the power to legislate, will disagree – therefore I would have to quote God McCarthy in Rooney v Connolly (1987), law made by judges can only be undone by judges). The Oireachtas has failed in healing the wound and, apparently, so has our judiciary. The question to be asked is, where did we go wrong?

In Campus Oil we trust no more

Interim injunctions are a person’s worst nightmare; they pop out of nowhere, without previous warning and can turn one’s world up-side down within minutes. They are a tool of mass destruction and very hard to appreciate its full potential unless it has happened to you or your client. To make it worse, this monstrosity was allowed to run loose for decades, in the name of the well known Campus Oil principles.

American Cyanamid was decided in 1975 and it took eight years for it to sail across the Irish Sea. During that time exceptions to its principles had already started to emerge in England, one of which was the case of N.W.L. ltd v Woods (1979). It immediately became clear to the British that unless they tame that puppy, it would soon grow up to be a vicious breed. And it did.