Judge declines to revisit ruling in Barry English dispute over $8m

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Mr Justice Denis McDonald declined an application to reassess his 2019 decision about $8 million held in Guernsey in a dispute involving businessman Barry English and architect Jeremiah Ryan. The High Court judgment was published on 31 May 2021. The proceedings were reported on 2 June 2021.

In 2017, Mr Ryan and HKR Middle East Architects Engineering LLC (HKRME) brought proceedings against Mr English. Mr Ryan acted on behalf of the company and a trust, claiming the money should pay the company’s lawful liabilities and the balance should go to the Ryan Children’s Trust. The money had moved from HKRME to a Guernsey account held by Sunvit International Ltd, which was controlled by a trust benefiting Mr English and his family.

Mr English disputed that he had acted as caretaker of HKRME. He said he owned the company, had earned the money through services supplied to it and was entitled to transfer it. The judge found the funds had been transferred at Mr Ryan’s direction when he was the beneficial, though not legal, owner of HKRME.

In 2019, the judge dismissed the claim brought by Mr Ryan and Patrick Stafford as trustees of the Ryan Family Trust, finding that the trust had no beneficial interest in HKRME’s shares. He found Mr English had acted as caretaker of the shares for Mr Ryan, who had made no personal claim. HKRME could succeed in unjust enrichment only to the extent of its unpaid lawful liabilities; their nature and extent remained to be determined.

In the 2021 judgment, Mr Justice McDonald maintained that Mr English had to return only the money needed to pay HKRME’s lawful debts, then about $3 million, leaving $5 million in the Sunvit account. Mr Ryan’s bankruptcy trustee, Nicholas Stuart Wood, had separately begun proceedings seeking to include the transferred money in the bankruptcy estate.

This case may have concluded differently. The outcome has not yet been confirmed by a public source we could find.