After discussions during the recess, lawyers for Paddy Cosgrave informed the court that some progress had been made and asked for an adjournment to Wednesday morning. Mr Justice Michael Twomey has agreed.
Bernard Dunleavy SC, for Cosgrave, said the “parties had a level of engagement that was positive” during the break.
The latest on the Web Summit legal action as the three co-founders consider a direct appeal from the trial judge to pursue a mediated settlement. Full story here.
Whether the three former friends can find common ground remains to be seen. In essence, Hickey and Kelly want Cosgrave to buy out their respective 7 per cent and 12 per cent stakes in the business. The question of how those shares should be valued is, and always has been, the main sticking point in the proceedings. We’ll find out more at 1pm.
We’re back. Briefly, anyway. Bernard Dunleavy SC, for Paddy Cosgrave, has asked the court to rise until 1pm to consider the judge’s comments further.
“I don’t want to say anything more other than all the parties took on board what was said,” Mr Dunleavy said. “I wonder if the court might postpone taking the evidence until this afternoon.”
The court is now in recess until 12.55pm.
The legal teams are now filing back into court. It’s worth noting that the judge commended the three parties for attempting to resolve their bitter, overlapping disputes through mediation the week before the trial kicked off. Those efforts were fruitless, however.
The judge has urged the three parties not to focus on the “rights and wrongs” of their business dealings. Instead, they should work towards an agreement and “focus on a resolution” of their disputes, mediation being a “thousand times more preferable than litigation”, he said, quoting Mr Justice Gerard Hogan.
Quoting Voltaire, the judge said: “I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one.”
Mr Justice Michael Twomey told the court he wanted to address the three parties before the day’s proceedings begin in earnest. He said while opening submissions were delivered last week, this week is when the trial truly begins.
As such, he warned the parties that this could be a lengthy process, stretching from the middle of March to the middle of June. He is likely to deliver judgment in the winter, which will probably disappoint all the parties to at least some extent. When appeals are factored in, there may not be a resolution until 2028.
That’s time the parties will not get back, Judge Twomey said.
Paddy Cosgrave, David Kelly and Daire Hickey have now left the court with their legal teams upon the judge’s urging. He said he would give them five minutes to consider his suggestion that a mediated settlement of the dispute would be preferable to a lengthy trial process, a judgment of the court followed by the inevitable appeals.
This is Ian Curran. We’re up and running here in court 29 for Day 5 of the Web Summit civil trial. Daire Hickey, who owns 7 per cent of the company, is up in the witness box this morning, the first of the three principals in the case to give evidence in the bitter legal dispute.
Former director of Web Summit Daire Hickey, who is suing his one-time friend and business partner, Paddy Cosgrave, was expected to give evidence in the bitter corporate legal dispute in Dublin today but the case has now been adjourned until Wednesday.
Here are the main points so far:
- Mr Hickey, who joined the business in 2010 before departing as an employee in 2017, is alleging that his rights as a minority shareholder in Manders Terrace, the trading company behind the tech conference business, were oppressed by Mr Cosgrave.
- He is also suing Mr Cosgrave for alleged breaches of a profit-sharing agreement.
- The case is one of five involving Mr Cosgrave, Mr Hickey and another minority shareholder, David Kelly, being heard by Mr Justice Michael Twomey in a High Court trial that began last week.
- Mr Hickey is alleging that Mr Cosgrave weaponised a 2016 sexual harassment complaint made against him by an employee to force him out of the company, from which he resigned as a director in 2019.
- The hearing has adjourned for today.
