The Court of Appeal has rejected Paul Coyle’s challenge to a series of High Court orders concerning the liquidation of Decobake Limited, including his applications to set aside the winding-up order and remove the liquidator.
In a judgment delivered on 8 February 2022, Mr Justice Murray, with Collins and Pilkington JJ agreeing, upheld the decisions of Allen J. The appeal concerned nine orders made in 2020 after an eight-day hearing. The court found no basis to disturb them.
Decobake was wound up in July 2017 after Dublin City Council rate collector Denis McHugh petitioned over unpaid rates. The High Court found that a statutory demand had been properly served and that the company had failed to pay within 21 days. The winding-up order was upheld on an earlier appeal in 2019. The Court of Appeal said those findings were final and could not be reopened through Mr Coyle’s later applications.
Mr Coyle argued, among other things, that the debt was not due, that the company was solvent, that the petition had been brought for an improper purpose and that new material obtained from the Council justified revisiting the order. The court rejected those arguments, finding that the issues had already been decided or could have been raised earlier. It also concluded that the new material did not justify setting aside a final order.
The court upheld the refusal to remove liquidator Declan De Lacy. It found that Mr Coyle had not established the allegations of misconduct on which his application relied. It also upheld decisions concerning the committee of inspection, access to company records and the refusal to release documents obtained through discovery in separate proceedings.
One issue had become moot: the liquidator’s filing of a statement about the progress of the winding up, which was eventually delivered in January 2020. The court made no order on that part of the appeal. Its costs view was provisional: it proposed that costs of the appeal be awarded to the liquidator, Mr McHugh and Council-associated parties, except for the moot issue. Mr Coyle could dispute that view at a further hearing. The court also indicated it would not interfere with the High Court’s costs orders.