Lotto loser parts with legal team
Stepmother to appeal loss
A LOTTERY winner is parting company with her lawyers after losing a legal battle to avoid paying her estranged stepson a €565,000 share of a €3.4million jackpot, a court has heard.
However, hairdresser Mary Walsh, 66, is pressing ahead with her appeal against the High Court’s February verdict.
The court found that she gave ‘unreliable’ testimony about the January 2011 family Lotto win and is ‘capable of very significant calculation and design’. The appeal won’t be heard until late 2018 due to appeal court backlogs.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Seán Ryan, president of the Court of Appeal, said he would hear the motion by Mrs Walsh’s solicitors to ‘come off record’ in the coming weeks.
Having collected the €3.38million winnings in 2011, Mrs Walsh chose not to distribute equal €564,956 shares among a group that included her husband Peter, who died of cancer later that year. Instead, she gave €100,000 to Kevin Black – her late husband’s nephew – plus €300,000 to her son Jason and about €456,000 to her other son Anthony.
She gave nothing to her stepson David Walsh, a 52-year-old painter and decorator, of Knocknagreana, Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, claiming she had ‘reservations’ about him.
During the High Court hearing, Mr Walsh claimed his stepmother – who now lives in a mansion called Perssepark in Ballinasloe – had ‘laughed’ at him when he asked her for his full share. This February, Mr Walsh won a €564,965 court order against his stepmother after a seven-day hearing.
Judge Ryan yesterday said he was ‘embarrassed’ about current lengthy delays in his court.
As he set dates for almost 70 civil appeals waiting to be heard, he called for more senior judges to help combat the backlog.
Setting October 2, 2018, as the date for Mrs Walsh’s appeal to begin, Judge Ryan told lawyers: ‘We might get more judges and then it’ll be a different story. But I wouldn’t plan your diary on that basis.’
Dervla Browne SC, for Mrs Walsh’s stepson David Walsh, said the appeal will involve ‘significant novel issues’. Earlier, the judge told lawyers seeking a hearing date in a separate case: ‘If you think this is long in advance, I am embarrassed about this.
‘Previously [under the old appeal court system], it was worse.’
‘Embarrassed about delays’