The High Court refused both of Carol and John Morrissey’s applications for discovery in their dispute with the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), Capita Asset Services (Ireland) and State defendants. Mr Justice David Keane’s ruling dealt only with requests for documents; it did not determine the wider claims or the NAMA defendants’ counterclaim for judgment on a debt.
The Morrisseys’ action challenges decisions concerning loans taken out by John Morrissey from Irish Nationwide Building Society between 2004 and 2006, secured against eight properties, including the couple’s family home. The plaintiffs allege, among other things, that NAMA and the Minister for Finance acted unlawfully in managing the loans and appointing receivers over seven investment properties. Those are claims in the proceedings, not findings in this discovery ruling.
The applications before the court sought documents from NAMA and Capita, and from the State defendants. In the NAMA application, only two disputed categories remained. The court refused a request for all documents relating to a NAMA strategy for early disposal, finding the category too broad and not shown to be relevant to an issue defined by the pleadings. It also refused three categories concerning asset disposal, debt repayment targets and communications with the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund. The judge found that the same categories had been expressly refused in an earlier offer of discovery, which the plaintiffs had agreed to accept when their first motion was struck out by consent. Renewing the requests in the later motion would amount to an abuse of process, he ruled.
The State application concerned six categories of documents relating to alleged government influence over NAMA. The judge refused each. Among his reasons were that key communications or commitments were admitted in the pleadings, some information was available in public records, and the requests were too broad or were not needed to resolve a material factual dispute. For the request concerning a direction to NAMA’s Advisory Group, he found the issue was one of law rather than a significant factual controversy that discovery could address.
The court’s order was limited to discovery: none of the requested documents was ordered to be produced. The wider action was to proceed on affidavit, subject to cross-examination, under an earlier case-management direction. The ruling did not resolve the plaintiffs’ substantive allegations or the counterclaim seeking €32,516,390.55 plus interest against John Morrissey.