Man seeks damages after arrest warrant mix-up

A garda who arrested a man who is seeking damages after wrongfully spending eight days in prison after he was mistaken for someone else has told the High Court he believed that all the arrest warrants referred to the plaintiff.

Garda Desmond Callaghan, warrants officer at Letterkenny station, said Patrick Kelly did not reply when the three warrants under which he was arrested were read out to him. The High Court heard that two of those three warrants referred to Mr Kelly but the third related to a man of the same name.

Mr Kelly, a part-time barber, formerly of Meadowbank, now of Árd na Rí, both Letterkenny, Co Donegal, is suing the State for damages for false imprisonment. He claims he was unlawfully held in prison for eight days before it was discovered that a warrant used to arrest him related to another man of the same name.

The State denies the claim.

Mr Kelly has told the court he was held for two nights in Mountjoy Prison before he was transferred to Loughan House, Cavan, where the mistake was discovered on his eighth day in custody.

Mr Kelly had been fined £350 for drink-driving and public order offences. He claimed that when gardaí came to his then home on December 28th, 1998, to arrest him for non-payment of the fines, they had a warrant relating to another Patrick Kelly, a truck owner from Dooballagh, Letterkenny, who had been fined £450 for an overladen lorry offence.

He claimed when he argued he only owed £350, gardaí refused to show him the warrant which he says referred to the other Patrick Kelly.

In evidence yesterday Garda O'Callaghan said he had three warrants when he arrested Mr Kelly, two of which referred to him and the third relating to the other man. He believed at the time all three referred to Mr Kelly who lived at the time in Meadowbank but had previously lived in Dooballagh.

When he arrived at Mr Kelly's home, he found him hiding in the attic, he said. When he arrested him, he asked him would he pay £800, the total of the three warrants in his possession.

He said Mr Kelly did not question the amount owed, either at the house or later in Letterkenny Garda station where he was taken before being brought by taxi to Mountjoy in Dublin.

Under cross-examination, Garda Callaghan agreed a mistake was made in relation to the third warrant but not in relation to the other two.

He denied Mr Kelly's relatives had come to the Garda station and offered to pay £350 and that he refused, saying it had to be "£450 or nothing". A colleague who accompanied Garda Callaghan to arrest Mr Kelly, now retired Garda Michael Quinlivan, told the court he accepted a mistake had been made in relation to the third warrant but said it was "an honest mistake".

He did not accept that Mr Kelly had been adversely affected by the arrest.

The case, before Mr Justice Éamon de Valera and a jury, resumes next Tuesday.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times