TV doc’s proceedings vexatious, court told

Derek Richardson, Irish businessman and owner of English rugby team Wasps, is to ask the High Court next Monday to throw out injunction proceedings brought against him by TV doctor Nina Byrnes.

Barrister William Hamilton, counsel for Mr Richardson, told Ms Justice Deirdre Murphy yesterday that Dr Byrnes had failed to make full and frank disclosure to the court last week when she obtained the injunction.

The High Court order restrains Mr Richardson and two other defendants, Pearl Health Limited and its director David Johnson, Killiney Hill Upper, Killiney, from interfering with her operation of a medical clinic at Glenageary Shopping Centre.

Mr Hamilton described the proceedings against Mr Richardson as “oppressive and vexatious” and told the judge he would be applying to have the injunction against his client discharged.

He told Judge Murphy the dispute was one between Dr Byrnes and Pearl Health and not Mr Richardson, who was not involved in the management of the medical centre. Dr Byrnes claimed he owns the property in which her clinic is situated.

She was last week temporarily restored by the High Court to possession of the clinic which she had been operating at Glenageary Shopping Centre since June of last year and from which, she claimed, the landlords and owners had evicted her.

Dr Byrnes, who has presented the TV shows Health of the Nation for RTÉ and Doctor in the House for TV3, claimed the actions of the defendants meant she was not in a position to attend to her patients at the clinic which trades under the name “Generation Health”. Mr Hamilton told the court that Mr Richardson was not involved in the management of the medical centre and that Dr Byrnes had failed to present “full and frank disclosure” of all matters required in obtaining a court injunction.

Dr Byrnes earlier told the court that following negotiations in 2015 she established a GP clinic on the first floor of Glenageary Shopping Centre.

She said that at the time, Pearl’s director David Johnson had advised her Mr Richardson was his business partner. She claimed it was agreed she would be a lessee of the property where she would have exclusive rights to provide GP services under the Generation Health brand. She had told the court that in recent months there had been incidents that amounted to an unlawful interference with her business.

Following legal correspondence she had been told earlier this month that her agreement had been terminated, that the locks would be changed and her belongings removed. When she had arrived for work on August 12, there had been an attempt to lock her out of the premises.

Byrnes claimed the actions of the defendants would cause irreparable damage to her medical and business reputation as well as her standing in the community.