Litigation in COVID19 Ireland
At Vizlegal we collect data every day from multiple courts and jurisdictions -including all new cases being filed in the Irish High Court each day. Over recent years we would see 15–16,000 new cases filed each year.
How has COVID19 affected activity in the High Court?
At Vizlegal we collect data every day from multiple courts and jurisdictions -including all new cases being filed in the Irish High Court each day. Over recent years we would see 15–16,000 new cases filed each year.
Since the start of the COVID19 crisis we’ve seen a drop-off in activity at the High Court — but the trend does appear to be returning to something approaching normal.
Overall here are the number of new cases filed in the period January 1 to April 30 for the following six years:
You can see that we’re down by almost 1,000 cases on last year — from 5,059 to 4,131 in the same period.
Now let’s zoom in on 2020. Here are number of new cases filed each day from January 1, 2020 to April 30, 2020.
As you can see, the number of new cases filed reached a low on March 30, 2020 (this includes the Easter vacation also). On that date— just over two weeks after the beginning of lockdown measures including the closure of schools — just 12 new cases were filed, when throughout February typically 50–60 cases were being filed each day.
Move forward to April 30 and 56 new cases were filed — something of a return to normal and the trend has generally been upwards since then. May shows several dates with 50–60 new cases each day. Once the number of cases returns to that level on a regular basis we could assume that activity has returned to something approaching normal.
And of course given disputes may increased because of COVID19 we could well see an increase in new cases for the rest of the year.
We will be continuing to monitor new cases and keeping our customers updated with our tracking features so they can keep on top of all the cases they or their firms are involved in — including getting notified about new filings or listings for their cases, and their upcoming court dates using our new calendar feature.
You can track cases, get calendar reminders and search millions of judgments and regulatory decisions from multiple jurisdictions on our free trial. You can try us out too or book a demonstration:
If you’re interested in the underlying data and exploring litigation data further please contact us for consultancy inquiries.
Team Vizlegal