The Supreme Court has dismissed Gerard Gannon’s appeal against a High Court decree of specific performance and damages in a dispute over linked commercial property arrangements in Dublin.
The case concerned JLT Financial Services Limited, formerly Liberty Asset Management Limited, and a proposed arrangement involving its lease at 54 Northumberland Road and a lease of premises owned by Gannon at 8 Richview Office Park, Clonskeagh. The High Court found that the parties had agreed in principle that JLT would take the Richview lease and Gannon would take over JLT’s leasehold interest in Northumberland Road.
The Supreme Court judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley on 21 November 2017, records that the parties’ solicitors exchanged documents marked “subject to contract” and that there was no sufficient written note or memorandum of a concluded contract for the Statute of Frauds. The High Court had found that the parties’ arrangement became a concluded contract when JLT took the Richview lease in July 2007, in reliance on the linked agreement.
Gannon argued on appeal that there had never been a concluded agreement concerning Northumberland Road, that the solicitors’ process had separated the two property dealings, and that the High Court’s reliance on part performance went beyond the case pleaded. He also relied on delay in obtaining the landlord’s consent to assignment.
The Supreme Court held that the trial judge’s findings were supported by the evidence. It accepted that the parties understood the arrangements as a “package” of mutual obligations and found nothing to show that the solicitors had agreed to separate them. The Court also concluded that the High Court was entitled to find that the facts supported the doctrine of part performance, despite the pleadings not setting it out clearly in those terms.
The appeal was dismissed. The judgment upheld the High Court’s decree of specific performance and award of damages; it did not set out a new damages figure or separate additional order.