The High Court has dismissed an application to commit a director of Guessford Ltd, which trades as Oxigen Environmental, to prison over alleged breaches of an order governing its waste facility at Barnan, County Offaly.
Mr Justice Garrett Simons ruled on 2 June 2022 that the applicants had not established an ongoing breach warranting coercive action. The motion had originally named two directors, but the application against Sean Doyle was withdrawn because the applicants could not prove that he had been personally served. The application proceeded against Aidan Doyle alone.
The applicants argued that the company breached the order by accepting wooden pallets from construction sites, which they said were packaging waste rather than construction and demolition waste. The judge held that the November 2021 order did not clearly prohibit those deliveries. Whether the pallets fell within the permitted category was open to reasonable interpretation, and the order had to be read objectively for the contempt application.
The court accepted that timber had continued to be shredded at the facility for several weeks after the compliance period expired. The activity stopped in mid-February 2022 and the shredder was removed. The formal order had omitted the timber-shredding prohibition stated in the earlier judgment. Given that omission, the timing of service on the directors and the cessation of shredding before the hearing, the judge said it was not appropriate to impose a punitive contempt sanction.
The applicants also alleged that furniture, electronic equipment and green waste had been accepted during January and February. The judge found the evidence, including poor-quality photographs and testimony about skips, did not prove those allegations beyond reasonable doubt. He noted that the photographs’ dates and provenance had been misrepresented in an affidavit and that a skip shown in some images had gone to another company facility, not Barnan. The company’s evidence described measures to screen incoming loads, and the court was satisfied reasonable steps had been put in place.
The judge also held that the Companies Act 2014 requirements for enforcing the order against company directors had not been met. The order did not contain the required statement alerting directors to possible personal liability. The contempt motion was dismissed. The court amended the order under the slip rule to include the timber-shredding prohibition and listed the proceedings for argument on costs on 17 June 2022.