The High Court dismissed an application by four adult children defendants to exclude parts of a bank witness’s statement before trial, leaving questions about admissibility and evidential weight to the trial judge.
Mr Justice Kelly delivered the ruling on 2 November 2012 in the Commercial List. The application concerned a 39-paragraph statement by Des Hanrahan, a director in the plaintiff bank’s Specialist Property Group. The defendants argued that some passages were hearsay or otherwise inadmissible. The trial was due to begin on 4 December 2012, and the four applicants had not yet delivered their own witness statements.
The underlying action concerns who owns household contents at Gorse Hill in Killiney and at 8 Barton Street in London. The bank sought declarations that the contents belonged to the fifth and sixth defendants, the O’Donnells, rather than the other defendants or a trust for them. The bank had obtained a judgment for more than €70 million against the O’Donnells in other proceedings and said the chattels should be available to help satisfy it.
The O’Donnells and their adult children dispute the bank’s position. They rely on letters of October 2000, which they say transferred ownership of the Gorse Hill contents to a trust or to the adult children, in connection with a right for the O’Donnells to reside at the premises. The parties’ pleadings also make differing claims about the contents at Barton Street. Those ownership issues were not decided in this application.
The objections to Hanrahan’s statement included references to affidavits and to evidence Brian O’Donnell gave in a post-judgment examination, a conversation between a solicitor for the bank and a director of Chancery Trustees, and correspondence from Chancery. Mr Justice Kelly noted that the statement was offered against all defendants. He said evidence of statements made under oath could be admissible as admissions against the O’Donnells, but whether it was admissible or probative against the adult children was for the trial judge. He likewise declined to decide the correspondence objections at this stage.
Applying the approach in an earlier High Court judgment, the judge said a pre-trial exclusion application required a heavy burden: it had to be plain that the evidence could never be relevant or sufficiently helpful at trial. He concluded the applicants had not met that burden and dismissed the application. The ruling did not determine the ownership dispute or finally rule on the challenged material’s admissibility.