Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie – How Much Delay Is Too Much?

As Mr Justice Keane recently stated in the High Court case of Brian Maxwell v Irish Life Assurance and others 1 , there is no strict chronological or arithmetical answer to the question: what constitutes an inordinate delay in the prosecution of proceedings? Instead, the question of whether inordinate delay arises is a mixed question of fact and law, dependent on the circumstances of each case.

We look at this recent case and consider the court's views on the level of delay necessary to ground a successful application for want of prosecution.

The Facts

The plaintiff suffered a heart attack in June 2006 and made a claim against his policy. The insurance company rejected the claim based on the plaintiff's non-disclosure of his smoking history. Following a letter before action in 2007, the plaintiff finally issued proceedings in 2010, seeking an order directing specific performance from the defendant insurance company under a serious illness policy or an award of damages for breach of the insurance contract.

After an exchange of pleadings that stretched over almost four years, the plaintiff wrote seeking voluntary discovery in December 2014. The defendants responded with an application to dismiss for want of prosecution in July 2015.

In their application the...