The High Court has struck out part of Pepper Finance Corporation’s claim against solicitor Sean Sheehan over a 2003 undertaking connected with properties in Rush and Rogerstown, while allowing two other parts of the case to continue.
The dispute arose from a €700,000 loan offered by IIB Homeloans Limited to two borrowers in May 2003. Mr Sheehan, practising as Aaron Kelly & Company Solicitors, gave an undertaking concerning security over four properties. About €650,000 was ultimately drawn down.
By 2007 the borrowers were in default and the required first legal mortgages had not been put in place. Proceedings against Mr Sheehan were eventually commenced in 2012. The lender’s rights later passed through KBC Bank and Beltany Property Finance before being acquired by Pepper.
Mr Sheehan applied in March 2025 to have the case dismissed for want of prosecution because of delay. Mr Justice Micheál O’Connell found periods of unexcused inactivity amounting in aggregate to about four and a half years, although he also allowed for Covid disruption, settlement negotiations and some work on alternative enforcement routes.
The judge treated the three remaining property claims differently because the consequences of delay were not the same.
The claim concerning Atlantis, also described as Coast Road, Rogerstown, depended centrally on an alleged 2003 telephone conversation in which Mr Sheehan says an IIB representative released him from part of his undertaking. Pepper disputes that. After more than two decades, the court found that memories and oral evidence had been materially impaired. That part of the action was dismissed.
The claims concerning Camelot and 226 Lower Main Street, Rush, were allowed to continue. They depend more heavily on documentary and title evidence, and Mr Sheehan’s former solicitor had encouraged Pepper to pursue separate well-charging proceedings concerning 226 Main Street before progressing this action.
The ruling determines only whether the delayed claims may proceed. It does not decide whether Mr Sheehan breached the undertaking or what losses, if any, Pepper can recover.