Witness denies saying summons man bought off

Mr James Gogarty denied at the Flood tribunal yesterday that he had accused a summons-server of being "bought off" when the server reported that he was unable to serve a summons on Mr Joseph Murphy jnr in 1996.

The failure of the Dublin-based summons-server to locate Mr Murphy jnr, who was then based in London, was raised by Mr Garrett Cooney SC, for the Murphy group, in his continuing cross-examination of Mr Gogarty.

In 1996 Mr Gogarty was attempting to bring about a private prosecution of Mr Murphy for allegedly making intimidating latenight phone calls to the Gogarty home. It was claimed by Mr Gogarty that Mr Murphy had threatened to leave the Gogartys "without a roof" and to kick every bone in Mr Gogarty's body.

Mr Cooney asked if it was true that when the summons could not be served Mr Gogarty had accused the summons-server of being bribed to drop the summons. Mr Gogarty: "Well, it hasn't been satisfactorily explained, you know."

Mr Cooney continued: "Did you suggest on any occasion that he was bought off in some way or another?"

Mr Gogarty replied that his then solicitor, Mr Michael Hegarty, "eventually on my instructions, agreed to serve proceedings" following which he made a payment to Mr Hegarty of £1,000 "so that the proceedings would be served before the close of the sessions in or around about the end of July".

However, Mr Gogarty added, following this Mr Hegarty informed him that the summonsserver had asked to be relieved of his duties. This had caused Mr Gogarty some distress.

Mr Gogarty continued: "I said did he [Mr Hegarty] not get an affidavit off of him to say what he tried to do so that we could go to the High Court and get a different form of service. I said to him `was there any undue form of influence on this man?' and he said as far as he was concerned, no.

"I felt it was a bit lax that we did not get an affidavit from him so that we could save us further expense . . . Mr Hegarty said to me could you serve the proceedings yourself, and I said what would I be doing that for, I said, sure I paid you £1,000 to do this, and he accepted that."

Eventually, said Mr Gogarty, he got the court to authorise a service by post. Pressed by Mr Cooney if he had then questioned the behaviour of his solicitor as well as the summons-server, Mr Gogarty denied this.