Near empty courtroom witnesses the epilogue

THE last act of the Rocca-Ryan legal drama was played out in an almost empty courtroom and was over in five minutes.

The jury was gone and so were the large public gallery crowds which had turned up for each day of the trial, taking a break from real life.

Gone were the barristers who, curious as everybody else, had crowded into the back of court to swell the daily attendance. Gone too were the well-cut suits worn by the female representatives of the Kildare racing set, whose expressions had so fascinated media observers throughout the six-day case.

Neither did the protagonists themselves attend yesterday, as their legal representatives tied up the loose ends following a verdict which one lawyer, in the immediate wake of the decision, had called a "one-all draw".

On the last day of the trial, counsel for Mr Cathal Ryan had rebuked Ms Michelle Rocca for bringing the case before "the greedy eyes" of the media. Yesterday, a much-diminished media corps turned up to fix those eyes on the subject of barristers' fees.

But the figures remained hidden from view, as the lawyers took their bows and brought down the curtain on the whole affair.

Counsel for Ms Rocca, Mr Liam Reidy, was first on his feet, and he was brief. He told the judge his client had never been concerned about money. The key issue was an apology, and his instructions were not to seek an order for costs.

His opposite number, Mr Garrett Cooney, then rose to say that for his client too, money had never been an issue.

He was aware that it was his entitlement to seek the difference between the lower level of costs he would have incurred in the Circuit Court and the bill he now faced. But conscious of the need to lessen bitterness and restore "a degree of dignity", he too was making no application for costs.

That, apart from a brief and equally amicable exchange about access arrangements for Mr Ryan, was it. Mr Justice Moriarty, whose affable gravity had done as much as it could to defuse the bitterness of the week-long trial, looked pleased at the late outbreak of forbearance.

Congratulating the parties on their restraint at the end of "what was a painful set of proceedings" for all concerned, he simply affirmed the jury's order of £7,500 damages to Miss Rocca. Then, "so that I may appear as Caesar's wife", he promised the return to Ms Rocca's legal representatives of the last set of photographs in the case.

Thus, above reproach and grave to the last, the judge withdrew from a courtroom and a case in which no other party - the plaintiff, the defendant, the lawyers, the witnesses, the jury, the press or the public had escaped criticism.