The High Court has ordered solicitor Gerald Kean to tell Permanent TSB (PTSB) that it was not entitled to receive title deeds for two properties, retrieve the deeds from the bank and return them to EBS Limited. The order followed a plenary hearing on EBS’s claim that Mr Kean had failed to honour an undertaking to return the deeds on demand.
The dispute arose from a 2008 refinancing for client Dolores Corcoran. The properties, at Hunter’s Way and Portnahully, secured loans from EBS. PTSB advanced €480,000 to refinance three of four EBS loans. The fourth loan, account -243, remained unpaid, although it was also secured on both properties. Mr Kean had given undertakings to EBS concerning the deeds and to PTSB concerning first charges over the properties.
Mr Kean argued that his firm did not know the unpaid loan was secured on the two properties when it completed the refinancing, and that EBS’s redemption letter for that loan arrived too late. The court rejected that defence. It found that the letter had, on the balance of probabilities, arrived with the other redemption letters before the three loans were paid off. It also found that the firm should have recognised the security from warnings in the other letters and Land Registry searches received before the refinancing funds were paid to Ms Corcoran.
The judge concluded that Mr Kean remained bound by his undertaking to return the deeds to EBS on demand. The court also found that he should not have handed the deeds to PTSB, despite EBS’s outstanding charge and its repeated requests for their return. It found that a 2014 letter from Mr Kean to PTSB falsely stated that proceedings had been issued against EBS seeking release of a charge.
EBS asked the court to find that Mr Kean’s conduct amounted to professional misconduct. The judge declined, holding that the High Court lacked jurisdiction to make a formal misconduct declaration; that question falls initially to the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal. The court made no misconduct order. Its operative orders required Mr Kean to notify PTSB, retrieve the two sets of title deeds and return them to EBS.