The High Court has refused an application by John Nolan for an interlocutory injunction to prevent a receiver appointed by the Governor and Company of Bank of Ireland from disposing of his investment property on Clyde Road, Dublin 4.
In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 11 July 2017, Mr Justice Twomey said the application concerned a property securing a bank loan that Nolan had failed to repay. The Bank submitted, and Nolan did not contest, that a sale would leave a shortfall because the loan was in considerable negative equity.
Nolan’s plenary summons claims that the receiver’s appointment was void. He also claimed that he had agreed orally with the Bank in September 2015 to vary his repayments. The court said it did not find that claim credible. It pointed to a Bank letter dated 23 September 2015 stating that no alternative repayment arrangement would be offered, and said Nolan had not then asserted that a binding oral agreement existed. The judgment also referred to later demand and receiver-appointment letters, which he likewise did not answer with that claim.
A separate issue concerned whether the receiver’s deed of appointment should have been executed under hand rather than under seal. The Bank produced related documents late in the hearing, after Nolan raised the point two business days earlier. Rather than adjourn, the court assumed for the injunction application that the issue presented a fair question to be tried. That assumption was limited to the interim application; it did not decide whether the appointment was valid.
The court said an injunction required a fair question to be tried, damages to be inadequate, and the balance of convenience to favour relief. It found that the property was an investment property with no unique feature that made damages inadequate. Nolan alleged that the receiver had failed to let it to an embassy at a higher rent, but the court noted that Nolan himself had divided it into four lettings during his ownership.
The judge characterised Nolan’s complaints against the Bank as financial, including his claim that a higher interest rate in 2008 would have forced an earlier sale at a profit. The court concluded that damages would be an adequate remedy if Nolan later succeeded at the plenary hearing and proved the appointment void. It therefore refused the interlocutory injunction. The judgment did not determine the underlying plenary claim.