The High Court has refused a building contractor’s application for summary judgment against the owners of Corbalton Hall, sending his full €2,803,763.99 claim to a plenary hearing.
In a judgment delivered on 31 January 2006, Mr Justice Kelly said the defendants had shown a fair and reasonable probability of a real and bona fide defence. The court declined summary judgment on both amounts the contractor pursued at this stage: €645,886.62 attributed to an architect’s payment certificate and €564,180 for work carried out between 1 March and 11 May 2004.
The dispute followed renovation work at Corbalton Hall, Skryne, County Meath. The defendants bought the protected structure in 1999 and retained the plaintiff as main contractor. Although the defendants’ architect wrote in July 2002 of an intention to enter a formal contract for €5.95 million including VAT, no written contract was signed. The plaintiff said he had been working at the site since September 2001 and that the arrangement was payment on a time-and-materials basis.
The defendants had paid more than €9.8 million, but believed the reasonable value of the work was €7.845 million. They alleged defects, overcharging and inflated hours, and said retention money was not yet payable. The plaintiff disputed their position. The defendants also said they would counterclaim and raise set-off.
The €645,886.62 sought under the certificate was the balance after deducting €687,834.23 attributed to subcontractors, which the plaintiff accepted had been paid directly by the defendants. Justice Kelly held that the certificate could be significant evidence at trial, but did not establish an entitlement to summary judgment. With no written agreement, the court was not persuaded that the parties’ arrangements had excluded the defendants’ possible set-off or counterclaim; their asserted defences raised triable issues.
The €564,180 figure appeared in an affidavit by the defendants’ quantity surveyor as an arithmetic assessment of the work claim. The surveyor also said further assessment of productivity and alleged defects could affect the figures. The judge was not satisfied that the affidavit amounted to an admission that the sum was owed or that the defendants had no answer to the claim.
A separate application by the defendants to stay the proceedings for arbitration had earlier been refused because the court was not satisfied that a binding arbitration agreement had been shown. The present decision addressed summary judgment only. Justice Kelly refused it on both amounts and directed that the full claim proceed to a plenary hearing; he made no final determination of the parties’ competing claims.