PARTY TO A FRAUD
…the undertaker, his chameleon girlfriend, their friends and the innocent who says she was set up
A WOMAN who was named by a judge in a court case in which four people fraudulently claimed €240,000 damages, says she is shocked that she may have been the victim of a set-up.
The president of the Circuit Court threw out claims by the four people this week saying they had ‘planned accidents’ and were ‘party to a fraud’.
He said many of those making claims against Dublin undertaker Peter Slattery and his girlfriend Belinda McLoughlin, actually knew them and no accidents had taken place.
Dublin Bus mechanic Ian Doyle and Tallaght woman Samantha Byrne were also named as fraudsters. However, Dubliner Mandy Dutton who was named by Judge Raymond Groarke in his reserved judgment as one of those also making a claim against Slattery, said she was shocked by news that he had apparently faked accidents.
‘This is the first I’ve heard of it or the court case,’ she told the Irish Mail on Sunday.
‘I know I had a claim going through but I didn’t know about these other cases. I never met this guy Peter in my life before.
‘The only time I saw him was the night he crashed into us.
‘We were in town going for something to eat, there were four of us in the car. We were looking for parking and he reversed his lorry down the road and bam! He went into us. ‘I had neck and back injuries, the usual, but they don’t affect me now. I was never told anything about him having other cases. I’m fuming.’ Asked whether she believed she may have been the victim of a set- up accident, she replied: ‘It looks like that doesn’t it?’ Ms Dutton’s brother Jamie Dutton, a car mechanic from Ballyfermot, refused to comment on the case to the MoS this week, hanging up the phone when he was contacted. He is also pursuing a case against Slattery arising from the accident in Dublin city centre in February 2016. Slattery, 41, an undertaker with Staf- fords Funeral Directors and parttime airport driver, from Griffith Avenue in north Dublin, also hung up the phone when contacted by the MoS this week.
Staffords had no comment to make about its employee.
The judge described Slattery in court this week as having ‘a passing familiarity with the truth, and none of his evidence was credible’.
Evidence uncovered by Zurich insurance found many of the claimants in cases involving Slattery, knew each other.
He originally sued his girlfriend Belinda McLoughlin of Holywell Crescent North, Swords, for damages for neck and back injuries arising from a rear-ending crash.
She was a joint defendant with Zurich in all four claims involving separate accidents. She admitted liability in all, but took no part in any of the cases.
The other cases involved Samantha Byrne and her sister Jessica Byrne, both of Tallaght, who sued for €60,000 each.
Mechanic Ian Doyle of Parkwest, Dublin 12, also sued for €60,000 for a separate accident. But the judge said he had lied to the court, concealing his true relationship with two female claimants whom ‘he clearly knew very well and had socialised with’.
He had also lied when denying knowing Samantha Byrne and ‘his credibility, too, is in tatters’.
Judge Groarke named 16 others as people who had made claims in separate cases – one of whom was Mandy Dutton. He said Slattery had known five of them and his girlfriend McLoughlin had known three. Several of the other claimants had known each other.
The judge said the case pushed ‘the explanation of coincidence off the cliff.’ Efforts to contact Belinda McLoughlin and Ian Doyle this week were unsuccessful.
‘Looks like I was set up, doesn’t it’ ‘Passing familiarity with the truth’