Court directs Michael Flatley to provide security for costs in €30m action over Castlehyde restoration
Mr Justice Eileen Roberts granted applications taken by UK building restoration firm, Austin Newport Group and various insurance underwriters seeking Mr Flatley to provide security for costs in the event they are successful in defending a €30 million legal action being taken by the dancer.
Advertisement
They estimate their legal costs could be €2.86 million.
Ms Justice Roberts ruled that the dancer's intention to return to live in Ireland and to contest the presidential election was not a basis for refusing an order for security.
Mr Flatley, who was one of the original performers in Riverdance, claims he and his family had to vacate his Castlehyde property outside Fermoy, Co Cork, in October 2023 after alleged toxic chemical residue was detected during routine maintenance.
In the main legal action, he is suing Austin Newport for carrying out alleged defective restoration work after the fire as well as insurance underwriters - MS Amlin Underwriting Ltd, AXA XL Underwriting Agencies Ltd, Hamilton Managing Agency Limited and Lloyds Insurance Company.
Advertisement
Mr Flatley claims the various insurers had knowledge of certain issues about the alleged contamination of Castlehyde which they failed to disclose to him when negotiating a settlement agreement.
Ms Justice Roberts said the application for security for costs in the case had some unusual aspects as the plaintiff was a person rather than a corporate entity who was claiming he could afford to pay any costs that might ultimately be awarded against him.
The judge noted there was also a dispute about whether Mr Flatley is ordinarily resident outside Ireland as well as about the assets he held within the jurisdiction.
The Riverdance performer claims he and his family had to vacate Castlehyde, the country estate he bought in 1999, after the main house became uninhabitable in October 2023.
Advertisement
The court heard there were various estimates on the value of Castlehyde up to €20 million.
However, the defendants became concerned that there would be sufficient equity in the property to cover their legal costs if successful when they became aware there was a legal charge of €7.9 million on Castlehyde.
Lawyers for the dancer had argued the application for security for costs was 'a final effort to derail' his legal action against the defendants as well as being an attempt to embarrass him.
They claimed it would also be a form of discrimination if Mr Flatley as an Irish citizen with assets in the jurisdiction had an order for security of costs made against him.
Advertisement
Ms Justice Roberts noted that a personal plaintiff who is ordinarily resident in Ireland, cannot have an order for security of costs made against them, unlike someone living outside the EU.
However, the court heard that Mr Flatley has been living in Monaco since at least 2014 and had effectively used Castlehyde as a holiday home up to October 2023.
During the proceedings, Ms Justice Roberts was also informed that Mr Flatley intended moving back to live in Ireland and to seek a nomination to run for President of Ireland.
Lawyers for the defendants objected to the admission of such claims on the basis they had previously been advised by Mr Flatley's lawyers that he was moving to live in Paris and later Valencia which never actually happened.
Advertisement
The dancer's lawyers claimed special circumstances existed which should result in the court refusing the order for security of costs.
They included that Mr Flatley had expressed an intention to return to live in Ireland permanently and an undue delay by the defendants in bringing the application for security.
Mr Flatley's lawyers also argued that he was 'a man of means' who had ample assets within Ireland to meet any award of costs and was 'a man of his word' who would pay any costs ordered against him.
In her ruling, Ms Justice Roberts said it appeared that Mr Flatley's stated intention to return to Ireland was not open-ended or unconditional but there was no evidence he would remain living in Ireland if he was unsuccessful 'in his Presidential ambitions.'
However, she ruled that he has been ordinarily resident in Monaco for more than 10 years.
The judge said his intention to return to Ireland and contest the presidential election seemed at odds with his argument that he would be residing in Ireland but for the actions of the defendants.
'There appears to be no reason why the plaintiff could not previously have returned to live in Ireland even if Castlehyde was uninhabitable,' she added.
The judge noted he has also taken a commercial decision not to live in Castlehyde due to an agreement in September 2023 to lease the house for an annual minimum rent of €1.35 million.
Ms Justice Roberts said she could not take into account Mr Flatley's rights to the Lord of the Dance which were variously valued at between £90 million Stg (€104 million) and €200 million in assessing the sufficiency of his assets within Ireland.
She made a similar finding in relation to Flatley Whiskey Limited as she observed that the dancer had not provided any evidence of his ownership of the company which was valued at €10 million.
The judge said taking a midway point of €9.5 million on valuations on Castlehyde was fairest to all parties which would leave net equity of €1.6 million allowing for secured debt on the property.
Ms Justice Roberts ruled Mr Flatley is in Ireland on a temporary and conditional basis and the defendants'' actions had not caused him to live in Monaco.
The judge said he had not discharged the burden of proof to show he had sufficient assets within the EU against which a successful defendant could enforce a costs order.
She instructed the parties to file and exchange written submissions about the amount of the security by November 14th.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
37 minutes ago
- The Guardian
My 11-year-old son and I like a lot of the same films and songs. Am I doing parenthood wrong?
Some things you know without being told. Kids reached peak summer holiday boredom last week – on 12 August to be precise – according to a survey. If you're a parent you may have laughed hollowly there, in the unlikely event you still have enough energy. Exhausted and bankrupt after standing in endless queues for more wholesome activities, we've started Cinema Club, which is totally different from just watching a film on the sofa, in ways I'll explain, er, later. I was excited to share a particular childhood favourite of mine with my son, who turned 11 a fortnight ago, although this can be a risky business (ooh, is he too young to watch Risky Business?). Showing your offspring movies you remember fondly but haven't seen in decades is often disappointing. Sometimes, they are so slow to get going that everyone loses interest, and many have aged astonishingly badly and are now problematic, to put it lightly. Luckily, the 1988 body-swap comedy Big was a hit straight away – fast paced, funny and poignant. The giant piano dance routine completely holds up. The only issue? A sex scene I'd forgotten. The protagonist has an adult form but is really 13 years old, and that wasn't even why it was awful. I recall the excruciating experience of enduring these kind of TV moments with my mum and dad all too well. How two onscreen minutes could feel as if they lasted roughly nine millennia. Cheeks burning, buttocks clenched, dying inside. I'd never considered if it was as embarrassing for them as for me, which I now presume it must have been because boy-oh-boy did that part of Big go on for ever. Oddly, it felt exactly the same as it did back then, despite being on the other side, the grownup. Being a parent is different now; 40 is the new 30, so we feel younger than our parents did at this age. The only involvement my parents had in the music I was listening to was yelling, 'Turn it down!' up the stairs. However, my son and I share a love of the pop star Lola Young. I'm not sure if that's OK, for a few reasons. There are clean mixes of her songs, but you have to ask Spotify, or whatever you're using, for them specifically, or you're treated to lyrics that make you long for the comparatively tame lovemaking of Tom Hanks. But worse than the awkward conversations some of the spicy versions have provoked is the uncomfortable feeling all is not right with the world. The title of Young's second album, released last year, is a bit too on the nose: This Wasn't Meant For You Anyway. Maybe she has a point. I'm not sure if my kid and I are allowed to like the same things, if I should be disapproving rather than singing along. Have the times a-changed or am I doing parenthood wrong? The traditional role of the parent here is to be terminally uncool and not get it. To suspect that the Beatles are bad influences because of their hairstyles, to get outraged over Madonna's antics. Not to be vogueing around the kitchen in a conical bra, like the 'I'm not a regular mom, I'm a cool mom' from Mean Girls. It isn't just Young, I am also a huge fan of YouTuber Ryan Trahan. My kid and I learned the viral Charli xcx Apple dance together (not to post on social media, I hasten to add). My husband is a dab hand at Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch and they race regularly. These are not pastimes we grin and bear, like watching Frozen again, or the lengthy train obsession that meant we spent most weekends standing on cold platforms, waving our blue hands at drivers as they passed by. This is all of us genuinely enjoying what we're doing, nobody faking it or making any kind of sacrifice. It goes the other way too – our boy's first proper late nights were due to the wait for the next episode of The Traitors being unbearable. He accidentally overheard a podcast I love, Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert, and now listens every week with me on purpose. And recently he joined us down a Sean Hayes wormhole that culminated in a Will & Grace marathon in which he demonstrated admirable stamina. Maybe the secret is not to question it. Perhaps this is actually the sweet spot. The teenage years are fast approaching, in about five minutes, us thinking that anything is good will probably be the kiss of death. I can only pray, when that dark day comes, I get custody of Lola Young.
The Guardian
37 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘50 years of anger and pain': Miami Sounband's Des Lee when Irish terrorists colluded with MI5 to massacre Ireland's biggest band
'It was absolutely despicable,' says Des Lee, his voice trembling with emotion, 'to think that those people who were supposed to be protecting us had planned our murder …' I've never heard a story as astonishing as Lee's. His memoir, My Saxophone Saved My Life, recounts the events of half a century ago, in which his much-loved pop group, the Miami Showband, were ambushed by loyalist paramilitaries operating a fake army checkpoint, with half his bandmates murdered as he lay still, playing dead to stay alive. Though the attack carries strangely little traction in Britain, the Miami Showband massacre of 1975 is deeply etched into Irish cultural memory. Even amid the context of the Troubles, whose bleak statistics – more than 3,600 dead, more than 47,500 injured – made slaughter almost normalised, the killing of three members of the Miami Showband left Ireland in shock. Fifty years after the atrocity, Lee, 79, tells me about a tangled plot with its roots in the uniquely Irish phenomenon of showbands. In their heyday in the 1950s to 70s, showbands – besuited troupes, closer to cabaret than rock'n'roll, performing contemporary hits with slick routines choreographed down to the last synchronised leg kick – fulfilled a need for glamour and escapism at a time when overseas stars seldom visited Ireland. Showbands, who typically took the stage around midnight, provided a crucial context in which young people from the Catholic and Protestant communities could forget their troubles (and the Troubles), and let their hair down. 'As far as we were concerned,' Lee recalls, 'a punter was a punter, no matter what religion, creed or colour. They would mingle, and you could have a Protestant meeting a Catholic and getting married. It was incredible.' Born John Desmond McAlea on 29 July 1946, Lee grew up in the Catholic suburb of Andersonstown, West Belfast, in a relatively comfortable working-class family. He would supplement his pocket money in audacious ways. On 12 July, AKA The Twelfth or Orangemen's Day, the Protestant community would hold rallies at which the likes of Reverend Ian Paisley would vehemently denounce Republicans and Catholics. Lee would go along and blend with the crowd, collecting bottles discarded by the Loyalist throng and claiming the penny deposits. Lee found a job at a plumbing supplier but his head was soon turned by rock'n'roll, and he quit to follow in the footsteps of his nightclub musician father. He served his apprenticeship on a thriving Belfast scene centred around Cymbals instrument shop, where he rubbed shoulders with a teenage Van Morrison ('A strange guy,' says Lee, 'but an exceptional talent') and future members of Thin Lizzy. In 1967, the circuit's leading act, the Miami Showband, underwent one of its periodic reshuffles and drafted in Lee on sax, along with a handsome, charismatic singer-pianist called Fran O'Toole. Fronted by Dickie Rock, who had represented Ireland at Eurovision, the Miami were as big as it got. When Des calls them 'The Irish Beatles' with a twinkle, it's only slight hyperbole: they topped the Irish singles chart seven times. 'When I got the deal to join,' says Lee, 'I thought, 'My God, all my birthdays are coming together.' I jumped at it.' 'Girls were screaming,' he says. 'We would have 2,500 people inside watching us, and 2,500 outside trying to get in. I couldn't go to the shop without people wanting my autograph. It was stardom with a capital S.' Lee developed a close friendship and songwriting partnership with O'Toole, who later replaced Rock as frontman. Lee became the bandleader. His responsibilities included repertoire and finances, and ensuring everyone looked immaculate (70s footage shows them in dazzling-white suits with glittering lapels). He also instilled discipline. 'My job was to make sure everybody was squeaky clean,' he says. 'No going on the piss before a gig. We weren't saints or angels, make no mistake. What goes on afterwards, behind closed doors, nobody knows. But we had to put on a professional show.' The Miami Showband entered the summer of 1975 in an optimistic mood. The band had scored major hits with Charlie Rich's country standard There Won't Be Anymore and Bonnie St Claire's bubblegum-glam nugget Clap Your Hands and Stamp Your Feet. O'Toole was being groomed for solo stardom, and had been booked to play Las Vegas to launch his Lee-penned single Love Is, with the intention of positioning him as the next David Cassidy. But that show never took place. On Wednesday 30 July 1975, the Miami played the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge, County Down, about 10 miles north of the border. 'It was just a normal night, nothing untoward. We came off stage and did the usual thing: signed autographs, chatted to the fans, then we had a cup of tea and a sandwich, and got ready to do the journey back to Dublin.' Road manager Brian Maguire went ahead in the equipment van. Drummer Ray Millar drove separately to visit family in Antrim. The rest of the band – O'Toole, Lee, Brian McCoy, bassist Stephen Travers and guitarist Tony Geraghty – climbed into the Volkswagen minibus and headed south. Eight miles into the journey, at 2.30am on Thursday 31 July, they were flagged down by the red torch of an army checkpoint, a commonplace occurrence in the North. 'You would be asked the same questions: 'Where are you going, where are you coming from?'' says Lee. 'We would be sitting in the van with a bottle of brandy or whiskey, and we'd occasionally offer a drop to the soldier who stopped us.' They were asked to step out of the van – again, not entirely unusual – and made to line up facing the roadside ditch. At first, the soldiers chatted casually, but their demeanour changed when someone with an English accent joined them and began giving orders. McCoy found this reassuring, telling Travers that they were dealing with the British army rather than the less predictable, locally recruited Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). Before the search, Lee asked permission to fetch his saxophone to show it wasn't a weapon, laying it on the road a few feet away. Suddenly, an almighty explosion tore through the van, throwing all five musicians across the ditch into the undergrowth. The soldiers had not been soldiers at all – at least, not on duty. The fake army patrol were members of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), although at least four of them were also serving with the UDR. Their intention was to plant a briefcase bomb under the driver's seat, timed to explode further down the road. The timer malfunctioned, instantly killing two members of the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade, Harris Boyle and Wesley Somerville. In the chaos, an order was given to shoot the fleeing musicians to eliminate witnesses. Lee lay still with his face in the grass, slowing his breathing and pretending to be dead – a trick he had learned from watching Vietnam movies – as he heard the murder of his friends taking place around him. First to die was McCoy, 32, shot in the back with a Luger pistol. Travers, 24, hit by a dumdum bullet, was seriously wounded. As Geraghty, 24, and O'Toole, 28, attempted to drag him to safety, they were caught by gunmen, pleading for their lives before being executed with Sterling submachine guns. O'Toole was shot 22 times, his long-haired head so badly mutilated that a doctor would later ask Lee if there was a girl in the band. Travers lay next to the body of McCoy and, like Lee, played dead. Once the attackers had apparently left the scene, Lee cautiously went to fetch help. 'The main road was the most horrific scene I've ever seen in my life,' he remembers. 'There were bits of bodies lying all over the place. It was horrendous.' The first passing vehicle, a truck, refused to give Lee a lift. Eventually, a young couple agreed to drive him to nearby Newry, where he alerted police. 'My hand was on the door handle just in case, ready to jump out, because I didn't trust anybody at that stage.' The killings stunned Ireland, and thousands lined the streets for the funerals of the murdered musicians. The Miami Showband had represented hope. Not only did their shows unite communities, but their membership was mixed: McCoy and Millar were Protestants, the rest were Catholics. Is it fanciful to suggest that they were targeted because someone, somewhere, resented this pan-sectarian fraternisation? Lee doesn't think that was the motive. 'We were the No 1 band, and this gang wanted maximum publicity. If that bomb had exploded when they intended, the Miami Showband would have been accused of carrying weapons for the IRA.' (Indeed, within 12 hours, the UVF accused the band of being bomb-traffickers, describing their killing as 'justifiable homicide'.) Lee agreed to testify at the trial in Belfast on condition he was helicoptered to and from the Irish border, with 24-hour protection. His life was threatened by relatives of the accused; he has, he says, been looking over his shoulder ever since. Lance corporal Thomas Crozier and Sgt James McDowell, both of the UDR, were sentenced to life in the Maze prison, as was John Somerville, brother of the deceased Wesley and a former soldier. (They were released under the Good Friday agreement.) Everything pointed towards collusion: covert collaboration between paramilitaries and the organs of the British state. Travers, Lee and Millar relaunched the Miami Showband with new members before the year was out, to familiar scenes of hysteria – but their hearts weren't in it. Travers felt they had become a circus, and that audiences had come to stare rather than dance; he left the band the following year. For Lee, now lead singer, it could never be the same without his lost band members. 'I looked around and there was no Fran, no Brian and no Tony, and I didn't enjoy that.' In 1982, tired of feeling that he and his family were in danger, Lee started a new life in South Africa, performing as a saxophonist and band leader on the Holiday Inn circuit. He remained there for two decades, only returning after his wife, Brenda, died. Travers, meanwhile, went on a tenacious, meticulous search for the truth, engaging with numerous investigations and initiatives. A 2019 Netflix documentary, Remastered: The Miami Showband Massacre, is centred around his dogged efforts. Through the years, the finger of suspicion has repeatedly pointed at two men: Capt Robert Nairac of the Grenadier guards (later executed by Republicans), and Robin 'The Jackal' Jackson, a former soldier from County Down and a key figure in the notorious Glenanne Gang, were believed to have planned the ambush. Both were named by British intelligence whistleblowers, and Ken Livingstone named Nairac as a conspirator in his maiden speech as an MP. In December 2017, 80 documents were released including a 1987 letter from the UVF to the then-taoiseach Charles Haughey on headed notepaper, which openly admitted collusion with MI5 in the attack. The evidence was now overwhelming. The historic activities of the Glenanne Gang, including the Miami Showband Massacre, fall under the purview of Operation Denton, due to report this year. The massacre hasn't faded from Irish memory. A sculpture commemorating the dead musicians, unveiled in 2007 by former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, stands on Parnell Square in Dublin. One person who apparently didn't remember, however, was Bono, who described the 2015 shootings at the Eagles of Death Metal show in Paris as 'the first direct attack on music'. He later apologised, and U2 incorporated a slide of the Miami Showband into their show. The survivors don't have the luxury of forgetting. The trauma has left an indelible mark. Travers was diagnosed, in later life, with enduring personality change. Lee has, he tells me, experienced profound survivor's guilt. In 2021, Lee was awarded £325,000 compensation, in a package he says was presented to survivors and families as a take-it-or-leave-it deal. He considers the sum to be 'peanuts, for 50 years of anger and pain'. More than financial recompense, he says what he hopes for, with up to five perpetrators still officially unaccounted for, is closure: 'Just tell the world the truth.' My Saxophone Saved My Life by Des Lee with Ken Murray is out now (Red Stripe Press)
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
How scary can theatre really be? My horror marathon in search of stage frights
I am a wimp. When my friends used to gather to screech over horror movies after school, I would sit watching Countdown with one of their mums until it was over. I had to watch The Blair Witch Project with all the lights on and I never got through the opening scene of The Ring. But when it comes to horror on stage, I've rarely been fazed. Bar the odd jump scare, how scary can theatre really be? I set out to find out by watching a full day of horror shows at the Edinburgh fringe. I start off gently with Elysium, a winding eat-the-rich tale told through lilting song. The gated community of Elysium Court is designed to keep the riff-raff out, but the inhabitants should be more worried about what they're locking in. With the air of two friends casually making music in their garage, Milly Blue and Jessie Maryon Davies of Ghouls Aloud unpack the concept that exclusivity equals safety, watching from a distance as the containment crushes everyone in Elysium Court into the same make and model – or destroys them if they attempt to stand out. Blue's storytelling is sweet and unsettling, though occasionally veers off into tangents that don't serve the story. Davies laces tension through with moody piano, with Blue looping her voice in climbing harmonies above, as strange events begin to haunt Elysium's newest resident. Digging into the soil beneath the standard-issue astroturf that clamps down every garden in the Court, old monsters start to emerge. The darkness creeps in slowly and the script wants tightening, with some songs pausing the action rather than driving it on, but I decide I like my horror being sung to me. Maybe this was the problem all along. From the candy-pink satire of Elysium, the pitch-black Scatter: A Horror Play couldn't be a sharper shift. The room is so dark it's a struggle to even find your seat. This low lighting continues as Patrick McPherson's jaw-clenching show of hereditary haunting reserves any bright light for blinding flashes. Liberally smattered with jump scares, the show sometimes leans so heavily on Will Hayman's intense shadows and sharp, saturated filters that the design comes to feel like the main event rather than an anchor to sink us deeper into the story. McPherson plays Tom, a young man reluctantly recounting the trip he and his brother took to scatter their father's ashes in rural Wales. In the predictably traumatising process, they discover that their dad's end-of-life aggression, previously brushed off as delirium, was something far more sinister, his acts of violence actually a deeply troubled form of protection. Jonny Harvey's direction makes repeated use of the classic torch sweeping around a blackened room and heavy, breathless silences followed by piercing, sinew-shaking screams. These old tricks are effective. I sink into my seat every time the torch winds up. A traditional folk horror, Scatter takes itself seriously. You can't help wondering if the balance of tension would intensify if some lightness was buried anywhere in the text; McPherson's performance, though convincing, starts off dour and stays similarly severe throughout. The ending is rushed, but Scatter sets out to scare, and it succeeds. As we pick our way out of the theatre, my heart takes a moment to return to its regular pace. Later that afternoon, in another about-turn, Jed Mathre does a stellar job of making a whole room want to punch him in the face. Melanie Godsey's existential comedy, Sponsored By the Void, offers a queer awakening through the form of a supernatural visitor. Mathre plays the emotionally illiterate boyfriend to Leah (Kelly Karcher) who is so overburdened by his uselessness that she's close to bursting. When The Void (Jennifer Ewing) waltzes in, Leah is immediately felled by her hot dom energy and her demand that Leah does exactly what she wants. 'Do you eat?' Leah asks her, quivering. 'I devour,' The Void replies. Created by Seattle-based company The Co-Conspirators, this goofy, sultry sci-fi horror revels in Leah's uncompromising newfound confidence, with Kennedy looking on in horror and Leah's friend Val (Be Russell, funny to her bones) watching with delight as she rejects everything she has previously accepted without resistance. Subservience to men is the real horror here. Eschewing subtleness, the play asks direct questions of how a woman can get trapped into a role she never asked for, and how she can – with support of a sexy, suited-up otherworldly entity – break her way out of it. 'I just want you to know what you're getting into,' David Alnwick says as he pops his head around the door, checking we're not actually here for the musical cabaret going on upstairs, before leaping to the side of the stage to fiddle with the video setup. Where a handful of these horror shows use film to enhance the spookiness, Alnwick's The Dare Witch Project is the only one to rely on it. Soldiering through technical issues, our eager host talks us through the footage he supposedly found in an old VHS he got off eBay. The man in the recordings looks surprisingly like him, with his clothes and his voice, and a determination to complete a challenge inspired by the infamous found-footage movie The Blair Witch Project. While most of the tension from this Free Fringe show comes from the screen, as Alnwick presents these clips of the mysterious doppelganger recording himself in the woods, there is a singular, inspired physical magic trick used to beautifully creepy effect. The looping inevitability built into the show mounts tension as we wait, nervously, for what we know is coming, but it takes too long to get there to truly shake any nerves. I find myself wanting to be more scared than I am. Perhaps I'm becoming a horror convert after all. The last show of the evening is the least terrifying. Maria Teresa Creasey's toothless attempt at a vampiric comedy-horror, Degenerate, begins ominously, as the writer-performer lies face-down, bound and gagged, waiting for one of us to untie her. But that's the end of the innovation. Pitched as experimental, Creasey's babbling speech acts like a fly being swatted, scattily returning to a smattering of ideas but never settling long enough to offer a performance worth our time. Hazily buzzing around the notion of women being deemed irrelevant as they age, Creasey's character eventually flits towards the eternal youth of the vampire and lip-syncs to clips of scary movies. She wants to last for ever. I'm glad this performance does not. Elysium is at Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower until 24 August; Scatter: A Horror Play is at Underbelly, Cowgate, until 24 August; Sponsored By the Void is at Greenside @ Riddles Court until 16 August; David Alnwick: The Dare Witch Project is at PBH's Free Fringe @ Voodoo Rooms until 24 August; Degenerate is at Pleasance Courtyard until 23 August
