The bitter High Court civil trials involving three co-founders of tech conference giant Web Summit is on the verge of resolution with settlement terms expected to come before the court on Thursday.
Hours of talks have taken place, and on Wednesday, the court was due to hear evidence from former Web Summit director Daire Hickey.
However, for the second day in a row, proceedings were put back as lawyers and parties held talks in corridors all morning outside Court 29 in the Four Courts building.
At around 12.30 pm, barrister Michael Cush SC, for another former director, David Kelly, told Mr Justice Michael Twomey that negotiations had not yet borne fruit but that time in the case had not been wasted.
Mr Justice Twomey then adjourned the case until 2 pm.
At around 2.05 pm, Mr Cosgrave's legal team asked him outside the court, and five minutes later, counsel for all three were seated before Mr Justice Twomey.
Mr Cush said he was pleased to say there had been a beneficial development through talks and that what was discussed between all three parties will be written up overnight and presented to the court tomorrow morning.
Mr Cush thanked the judge for the time allowed for the parties to enter into settlement discussions. Mr Justice Twomey then adjourned the matter for finalisation until 11 am on Thursday morning.
Web Summit majority shareholder Paddy Cosgrave was suing Mr Kelly, who owns 12 per cent of the shares in Web Summit, for alleged breaches of his fiduciary duties as a director of the company.
Mr Cosgrave was, in turn, being sued by Mr Kelly and Mr Hickey, who holds seven per cent of the shares in Web Summit, for alleged shareholder oppression and breaches of a profit-sharing agreement.
On Tuesday at the High Court, Mr Justice Twomey urged the parties to resolve their differences, rather than suffer the "real and human" cost of spending months in litigation.
Mr Justice Twomey quoted the French philosopher Voltaire, saying: "I was never ruined, but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one.”
He urged the three parties not to focus on the “rights and wrongs” of the history of their business disputes but to focus on resolution.
He said mediation was "a thousand times more preferable than going into litigation" and warned that the three months for which the case is scheduled could mean a judgment from him in the winter, which might not satisfy any of them.
This, he said, may lead to appeals and possibly thereafter to Supreme Court appeals, which could take up to three years from now to deliver a final judgment.
Mr Justice Twomey said that there would be a personal cost to the proceedings and that should matters be litigated to their fullest it would be three months of their lives they will "not get back, never get back" and that there would be a "real and human" cost to all involved.
The proceedings, which opened last week, had been scheduled to run for nine weeks.
Last week, when lawyers for all parties made their opening statements, Bernard Dunleavy SC, for Mr Cosgrave, said that proceedings brought by Mr Kelly and Mr Hickey are an attempt to avoid a discount on the potential sale of their shares in the tech conference firm.
Mr Dunleavy, who was responding to opening statements delivered in the proceedings by Mr Hickey and Mr Kelly’s counsel, said Web Summit is “big enough and valuable enough” to make the two minority shareholders “millionaires many times over in the morning” if they sold their stakes.
