Burke v O' Longain & Ors (Approved)

Factual and Procedural Background

The Plaintiff filed an application for an interlocutory injunction to restrain a hearing of his appeal by the Defendants. Judgment on this application was delivered electronically on 20 December 2023. Subsequently, the Plaintiff raised concerns by letter dated 23 December 2023, identifying two alleged errors in the judgment relating to the omission of a paragraph from a quoted report and an incomplete sentence in the judgment. The Court became aware of this correspondence on 17 January 2024. The Court considered these issues and proposed corrections to the judgment, informing the parties on 26 January 2024. The Plaintiff did not consent to the corrections and disputed that the errors were clerical. The Defendants did not intend to make submissions on the matter. The Court then considered the matter and issued a ruling on 15 February 2024 to correct the judgment accordingly.

Legal Issues Presented

1. Whether the omissions in the judgment constituted clerical errors subject to correction under the Slip Rule and inherent jurisdiction of the Court.
2. Whether it was appropriate and equitable to correct the judgment by including the omitted paragraph from the Principal's Report and deleting the incomplete phrase in the judgment.
3. Whether the proposed corrections would prejudice the Plaintiff or affect the finality of the judgment.

Arguments of the Parties

Plaintiff's Arguments

• The Plaintiff contended that the omissions were not clerical mistakes but substantive errors that went to the heart of the Court’s ratio decidendi.
• The omitted paragraph from the Principal's Report explicitly stated concerns about the Plaintiff’s public statements on transgenderism, which contradicted the Court’s findings that the conduct issues related only to the manner and timing of objections, not the beliefs themselves.
• The Plaintiff argued that the inclusion of the omitted paragraph without further engagement would render the judgment nonsensical and self-contradictory.
• The Plaintiff asserted that the Court’s characterization of the omissions as clerical errors was incorrect and opposed the correction under the Slip Rule.

Defendants' Arguments

• The Defendants' solicitors indicated they did not intend to make submissions and did not consider the Plaintiff’s complaints to be of any substance.

Table of Precedents Cited

No precedents were cited in the provided opinion.

Court's Reasoning and Analysis

The Court held jurisdiction under Order 28 Rule 11 of the Rules of the Superior Courts (the Slip Rule) and inherent jurisdiction to correct clerical errors in its judgment. The Court analyzed the nature of the omissions: the accidental omission of the final paragraph of the "Conclusion" section of the Principal's Report in paragraph 105, and the mistaken retention of the incomplete phrase "He says:" in paragraph 112. The Court found these to be clerical errors arising from the copy-typing and drafting process rather than substantive errors affecting the merits of the judgment.

The Court acknowledged the Plaintiff’s contention that the omitted paragraph contradicted the Court’s findings but determined that this issue concerned the merits of the judgment rather than the nature of the omission. The Court emphasized that it had considered the Principal’s Report in its entirety when making findings and that the correction was necessary to accurately reflect its stated intention to quote the full "Conclusion" section.

In exercising its discretion, the Court considered fairness and finality, concluding that correcting the judgment would not unfairly prejudice the Plaintiff. The Plaintiff would remain free to argue on appeal about the judgment’s coherence or substance and to refer to the original version. The Court also noted that no Order had yet been made pursuant to the judgment, facilitating correction without compromising finality.

Accordingly, the Court decided to issue a corrected version of the judgment, including the omitted paragraph and deleting the extraneous phrase, and to replace the version previously published on the court’s website.

Holding and Implications

The Court’s final decision was to correct the judgment by including the omitted final paragraph of the "Conclusion" section from the Principal's Report in paragraph 105 and deleting the phrase "He says:" from paragraph 112.

This correction ensures the judgment accurately reflects the Court’s manifest intention and maintains the integrity of the judicial record. The Plaintiff is not prejudiced by the correction and remains entitled to challenge the judgment’s merits on appeal. No new precedent was established; the ruling pertains solely to correcting clerical errors in the judgment.