Criminal sued over damage caused in house search

A Corkman serving a four-year sentence for money-laundering sued the State for damage caused to his house when gardaí carried out a search for money they believed was hidden there.

But Judge David Riordan dismissed the case brought by Jonathan Heaphy, aged 34, and said he was satisfied gardaí acted in good faith.

“Mr Heaphy appears to be of the view that ‘my house was trashed, they found nothing, I need to be compensated...’. He has that expectation but that is not the law: he has to prove that gardaí came to his house in bad faith. Bad faith would have been, in an extreme example, that they knew there was nothing there but they trashed the place anyway. It has not been proved that the guards went with an animus to do damage without cause,” he said at Cork Circuit Court.