DUN LAOGHAIRE NEWS vendor George Davis may sell newspapers at the entrance to the town’s main shopping centre for the rest of his life, a judge has declared.
Judge Francis Comerford said Davis could operate on the tiled area between the public footpath and the side doors of the centre.
The judge told barrister Mark O’Riordan Bl, counsel for Davis, that the centre’s owners Coltard were bound by way of a constructive trust which allowed Davis to continue his operation.
Davis, of Hadleigh, Ballybride Road, Rathmichael, Dublin, had been resisting a bid by Coltard to have his mobile news stand banned from the entrance doors of the centre.
He has been selling newspapers around the shopping centre and other areas of Dun Laoghaire for almost 40 years.
Barrister Raymond Delahunt, who appeared with Baily Homan Smyth McVeigh solicitors, told the court Davis at best only had only a licence to sell papers that could be revoked at any time.
Coltard claimed it had received a complaint from a shopping centre tenant about Davis’ trolley-type news stand attracting third parties, including cigarette smokers, congregating around it and causing an obstruction and potential fire risk.
In court on Tuesday, Davis told the court about how one of his staff pin-pointed the whereabouts of double murderer Malcolm MacArthur before his arrest in 1982.
He and Davis tipped off the gardaí that MacArthur was hiding somewhere in Dunlaoghaire.
Gardai, led by Detective Sergeant John O’Mahony, who later became head of the Criminal Assets Bureau and is currently an Assistant Commissioner, set a trap for the killer and eventually traced him to and arrested him in the home of the then Attorney General Paddy Connolly who passed away in January last year.
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