The Court of Appeal in the UK has mandated Ammi Burke, a disbarred solicitor, to shoulder the legal fees incurred by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) and her previous employer, Arthur Cox. Ammi Burke lost her appeal in April, as the Court of Appeal validated the High Court’s decision to dismiss her judicial review mid-hearing due to her excessively terrible and shocking behaviour.
Ammi Burke, a resident of Castlebar in Co Mayo, sought to overturn the WRC’s dismissal of her complaint alleging wrongful termination from Arthur Cox in late 2019. The legal firm she previously worked as a junior associate for, refuted the accusations of wrongful termination. Amid persistent and intentional interruptions and disruptions by Ammi Burke’s mother, Martina Burke, a WRC adjudicating officer had to stop hearing her complaint.
The Court of Appeal’s recent ruling was formed on written submissions, as it had to truncate its oral hearing of Ammi Burke’s appeal due to her multiple interruptions. The court instructed that she must pay for the required costs accrued by WRC and Arthur Cox in successfully countering her appeal. The request from Ammi Burke to the court to withhold any cost order against her was dubbed as fundamentally flawed by the judges.
This request from Burke was grounded on criticism of how her appeal hearing was managed and the court’s judgment. The judges declared that a losing appellant couldn’t circumvent the cost order by unjustifiably asserting the judgment was null and void. A motion from the law firm for the court to express its disapproval of Burke’s conduct by enforcing costs on a “legal practitioner and client” basis, which encapsulates all reasonable costs, was denied by the court.
The judges reaffirmed that they supported the High Court’s order for Ammi Burke to bear the majority of the costs of the High Court on these grounds. The Court of Appeal’s censure of Ammi Burke’s conduct is evidently apparent from its primary judgment, rendering the issuing of further disapprovals via additional cost orders unnecessary, given that the legal practitioner and client costs for the High Court are expected to be considerably higher, the judges said.