High Court - President’s Notice - Common Law Motion Lists

The following arrangements will apply for the Common Law Motion Lists in the High Court with effect from 13 January 2025. 

Lodging of Motion Papers

1. Motion papers for all motions to be heard in the Common Law Motion Lists must be lodged in advance of the hearing of the relevant list.
    
2. A paginated and indexed booklet of motion papers in respect of all motions in the Common Law Motion Lists must be lodged in the List Room (which is beside the Central Office) by no later than 4:30pm on the Thursday preceding the Monday on which the motion is listed. The booklet must be marked “Common Law Motion List”. Failure to lodge the booklet by the deadline will lead to the motion being adjourned or struck out, at the discretion of the judge.
    
3. The opening hours for the List Room are 10am to 4.30pm Monday to Friday and no appointment is necessary to lodge the motion papers in the List Room.
    
4. When a motion has been dealt with by the making of an order or where it has been adjourned, the papers must be collected from the List Room by 12pm on the Friday of that week with arrangements for collection being sent in advance by email to listroomhighcourt@courts.ie

Hearing of Motions

1. With effect from 13 January, 2025, motions of up to one hour in length can, subject to the demands of the list that day, be heard in the Common Law Motion Lists on Monday. If necessary, such motions can be put back to the end of the list or be heard at 2pm on the Monday.
    
2. Practitioners and litigants in person must provide a genuine and realistic estimate of the length of the hearing of the motion to enable the judge dealing with the list properly to consider whether the motion can be dealt with on a Monday or whether it should be transferred to the Non-Jury List to get a hearing date in that list. The judges hearing the Common Law Motion Lists will examine closely the time estimates given by practitioners and litigants in person to satisfy themselves whether the motion can be dealt with on a Monday. The purpose of this change is to relieve significant pressure in the Non-Jury List to which many motions have been transferred from the Common Law Motion Lists in recent times.  On further examination in the Non-Jury List, it has emerged that many of those motions could well have been dealt with in the Common Law Motion Lists on a Monday.

Mr. Justice David Barniville
President of the High Court
16 December, 2024