We weren’t expecting the Princess Diana approach when the Web Summit lads turned up for their Four Courts showdown on Tuesday morning.
Courtroom number 29 – on the top floor, naturally – will see testosterone-soaked tears and much heaving of manly bosoms by the time this mammoth bro-buster story of tech-millionaires falling out of love is finished.
Because according to Bernard Dunleavy, senior counsel for Paddy Cosgrave, the prime mover behind the mega-money spinning Web Summit, the “infidelity” of Cosgrave’s erstwhile business partner forced him to the courts to mend his broken heart/wallet.
“It is his faithlessness to the company which generates the anger” and “there is bitterness borne of rejection ... running like a spine through this action”, said the barrister, who is one of two senior counsel on the entrepreneur’s legal team.
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Three parties are contesting this action – Cosgrave is separately suing the other two, David Kelly and Daire Hickey, and they, in turn, are each suing him.
Or to paraphrase Diana, there are three of them in this court case, so it is a bit crowded.
Five cases in all, with the hearing expected to last at least nine weeks.
On one level, it all sounds very complicated. On the other, it’s just the age-old story of a once-exciting marriage breaking down and ending in acrimony and a major row over who gets to keep the dog.
There are seven senior counsel in the front row for this legal action in the commercial court. These are the Lex bros (even though one of them is a woman, fair play to her). The Lex bros would not be considered as macho as their tech-bros compadres, who would never consider wearing anything to do with silk.
But while “move fast and break things” may be a hallowed motto among the Silicon Valley set, that sort of behaviour would never be tolerated at dinner in the King’s Inns.
However, jockeys wear silks and they spend all day riding, so, respect bros nonetheless.
But back to the five cases and Mr Dunleavy’s early warning that the proceedings would probably be “acrimonious”. Earlier attempts at mediation failed and he spoke of people attempting “to assert rights rather than solve problems”.
These actions have been trundling along for a long time time now and clocking up enormous fees. But the men involved have deep pockets.
At the outset, leading Lex Bro Bernard outlined just how successful Web Summit is globally. “There is simply nothing like it anywhere else.”
It places “top tech movers and shakers cheek by jowl with the next tech innovators”.
We could almost smell the moolah.
A Web Summit in action is like the olden days of the California gold rush “like the Yukon or the Klondike except everyone is wearing comfortable T-shirts instead of miners' overalls”.
Some of the lawyers from the other sides struggled to stifle smiles at this point.
The main man behind this gold rush is Paddy Cosgrave. He wasn’t wearing a T-shirt. He wore a suit to court, having earlier tweeted on social media that he bought a number of new ones for the hearing along with new shoes.
He looked very nice, very smart and presentable, as did the other two.
For that cohort of society which seems to go weak at the knees at the mere mention of tech-bro dudes and their exploits, the fact that Paddy would be wearing a suit to the Four Courts is most fascinating.
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These rich lads are hero-worshipped by certain types of professional men who don’t mind being called “millennials” and love geeky “disrupters” who bestride the world like an Elonossus.
Here are their Conor McGregors – a band of macho but nice break-everything firestarters, but without the unsavoury carry-on and bad grammar.
We thought the courtroom would be packed with fellow bros eager for a glimpse of iconoclastic multimillionaire Paddy, but there was little public interest in the case. Even the press benches weren’t full, but that kept the ego quotient at a safe level.
Still, at least the protagonists merited a visit from one of the country’s leading court artists.
And The Irish Times was among outlets blogging from court. A live clog, so to speak.
The tech-bro fans were probably following them online instead of turning up in person. Rather like much of the evidence of exchanges between Paddy Cosgrave and David Kelly and Daire Hickey and Kelly, which was all emails and WhatsApps. Nobody ever seems to have lifted a telephone for a conversation as vast fortunes were on the line.
But, if truth be told, the opening hearing was all deathly dull. Watch this space, the webwatchers say, powering up their devices for when witnesses are eventually called to give evidence.
In the meantime, the most excitement around the Four Courts was the appearance of the Burkes of Castlebar, fresh from their visit to Washington, DC. But even they were very muted at their latest court case involving Enoch and not one of the Burke women lost a shoe.
