The High Court granted Cheldon Property Finance DAC summary judgment for €1,903,548.20 against John Hale and Mary Hale after rejecting their challenges to the transfer of a commercial loan and the interest charged on it. The lender waived its claims for default interest and for a disputed €14,761.18 calculation amount before judgment was entered.
The case concerned a €1,901,000 loan made by Permanent TSB to the defendants in November 2005 to fund renovations to a crèche premises they owned. The judgment records that the bank transferred the loan to Cheldon Property Finance in October 2015 and that the lender demanded repayment in January 2016. Proceedings began in January 2017.
The defendants argued that a term should be implied into the loan agreement preventing transfer to an “unregulated or unauthorised entity”. The court held that the facility’s express terms allowed the bank to assign or transfer its rights without the borrowers’ consent. The proposed implied term would contradict those terms and did not meet the legal tests for implying a contract term, the judge said. The judgment also records that the loan was serviced by Pepper Assets Servicing, a credit servicing firm regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
The defendants also challenged the interest calculation. At the hearing, their counsel accepted that the rate charged was the bank’s rate as varied under the facility, rather than a rate linked to Euribor. A report relied on by the defendants identified a possible €14,761.18 discrepancy. Cheldon disputed that there was an error but waived any claim to that amount for the summary judgment application. The judge said the defendants had not provided a credible basis to argue that changes to the variable rate were dishonest, capricious or unreasonable. Further material concerning rates offered to other bank customers did not affect the agreement in this case, the judgment said.
Cheldon also waived its claim to €12,084.48 in default interest, so the court did not need to decide that issue. From the €1,930,393.86 originally claimed, the two waived amounts left €1,903,548.20. The judge found the transfer valid, the interest rate consistent with the agreement, and no basis to send the matter to a plenary hearing. Summary judgment was granted for the remaining balance.