The High Court has ordered occupants of two Dublin properties to pay Pepper Finance Corporation (Ireland) DAC’s full costs of attachment and committal applications, following a ruling that the lender was entitled to the relief it sought.
Mr Justice Mark Sanfey made the costs orders in a judgment delivered on 15 December 2021. The proceedings concerned 21 Little Mary Street, Dublin 7, and 31 Richmond Avenue, Fairview, Dublin 3. The defendants were named in the case titles as persons unknown in occupation of each property.
The applications followed injunction orders requiring the occupants to surrender possession and control of the properties to Pepper Finance. In a substantive judgment delivered on 13 August 2021, the court rejected challenges to the injunction orders and found that service had been valid. It also rejected a challenge to the orders’ penal endorsement.
The court did not find beyond reasonable doubt that the occupants knew of the injunction orders or had deliberately disobeyed them when the attachment and committal applications were issued on 12 February 2021. But Justice Sanfey found that, after entering appearances and obtaining legal representation from at least 22 February, they knew of the orders and the consequences of non-compliance. At the hearing, he found them in deliberate breach.
The occupants later left the properties before the committal applications could be heard. Attachment orders issued against them were discharged. The remaining issue addressed in this judgment was the costs of the applications.
The occupants argued that their success on when contempt had been established amounted to partial success and justified an award of half their costs, or reserving costs to the trial judge. Pepper Finance argued that it had been entirely successful and that costs should follow the event.
Justice Sanfey accepted that the occupants had succeeded on the timing issue, but said it did not affect the applications’ ultimate outcome. He noted that the court had indicated it would grant the relief sought, and that the occupants had remained in possession for about eight months after learning of the orders and receiving legal advice. He concluded that the other challenges to the orders and service had failed and that the timing issue did not justify reducing the lender’s costs.
The court ordered the occupants to pay Pepper Finance’s entire costs of the attachment and committal applications in each proceeding.