The High Court has allowed Denis English to make most of his proposed amendments in a dispute with Promontoria (Aran) Limited over loans, a mortgage and the defendant’s claimed right to enforce them. The permission is conditional: English must file and serve a revised draft reflecting the judgment within one week, or the application will be refused.
Justice Siobhán Stack’s judgment, delivered on 17 May 2021, concerned a motion to extend time and obtain permission to rely on an amended reply and defence to counterclaim drafted in November 2020. A court direction had required the document by 3 April 2020. The judge found that the explanations offered for the delay, including the Covid-19 pandemic and the need for senior counsel to settle the document, were inadequate.
The underlying proceedings concern loan agreements English accepts he entered into with Ulster Bank between 2008 and 2011 and a 2007 mortgage over Knocklofty House, Clonmel. English disputes whether Promontoria acquired Ulster Bank’s rights and may enforce the loans and mortgage. He also alleges that a receiver appointed by Promontoria caused or permitted damage to the property; those allegations were not determined in this amendment application.
The defendant argued that the proposed amendments were an abuse of process and that an earlier interlocutory judgment had settled its entitlement to the loans, facilities and mortgage. Justice Stack rejected the contention that the earlier ruling prevented English from continuing to contest that entitlement at trial. She held that the ruling concerned an interlocutory application and was not a final determination of the issues.
The judge permitted amendments that largely repeated or expanded the existing dispute, as well as responses to new pleas concerning Capita Trust Company Limited. She refused proposed pleas that the mortgage was a “chose in possession” incapable of assignment and that the assignment involved champerty or maintenance, finding them unsupported or immaterial to the real issues. She also excluded specified references seeking to bring pleadings from separate receiver proceedings into this case, and disallowed a claim that two proceedings over the same debt amounted to an abuse of process, since the summary proceedings had been struck out as against English.
The judge reserved the costs of the motion. The parties were given until 7 June 2021 to file submissions on costs, with replies due by 14 June. The ruling addressed permission to amend pleadings; it did not decide the parties’ underlying rights under the loans or mortgage.