The High Court has restrained the sale of a house in Carrickmines while a dispute proceeds over whether it was given as security for a separate loan. The order is conditional on continued repayments and the plaintiffs moving the case along; it does not prevent the receiver from letting the property.
The application concerned 15 Carrickmines Chase, Dublin 18. The second plaintiff owns the house. The defendants, Havbell DAC and receiver Tom O’Brien, sought to sell it to recover money claimed under a loan taken out by the first plaintiff for two apartments at Spencer Dock.
The judge, Mr Justice Allen, said there was a bona fide issue for trial: whether the second plaintiff was liable for the Spencer Dock loan and whether the Carrickmines property secured it. The mortgage wording appeared to support the defendants’ position, but the judge said evidence about the parties’ intention when the mortgage was made could affect its meaning. The second plaintiff said he had no involvement in the later borrowing; that evidence was, at this stage, uncontradicted. The judge did not decide who would ultimately succeed.
The Carrickmines loan had not been called in for repayment. The second plaintiff had been making its revised monthly repayments of €5,678.39, more or less. By contrast, the first plaintiff stopped paying the Spencer Dock loan after a demand for higher monthly payments in January 2017. The judge noted that the defendants had another Spencer Dock apartment available as security, although its sale would not necessarily clear that loan.
The second plaintiff had argued that the house was to become his family home. He had never lived there, and abandoned his request to be put into possession while the case was pending. The judge described the house as an investment property and considered the evidence about the plaintiff’s ability to meet an undertaking to pay damages to be meagre. But he found that selling the property before trial could extinguish the owner’s property right if the claim ultimately succeeded.
Balancing the risks of injustice, the judge ordered that the defendants could not sell the house pending trial. The order does not decide whether the Carrickmines property secures the Spencer Dock debt, or the second plaintiff’s liability for that debt. It remains subject to the second plaintiff continuing the Carrickmines loan repayments and expediting the action. The defendants may apply to discharge the order if payments are missed or the case is delayed.