The High Court ruled that it had jurisdiction to consider an application to restrain a respondent from dealing with assets in Ireland while divorce proceedings were pending in England. It did not grant the requested injunction at this stage, saying it first needed to hear submissions on the principles governing injunctive relief and the nature of the order sought.
The anonymised applicant, M.M., and respondent, J.D., married in Northern Ireland in 2005. M.M. said she had met J.D. in Dublin in 1997 and began living with him at a Dublin property in October 1998. They separated at the end of September 2011, and she later moved to England and began divorce proceedings there.
The English High Court made an order on 12 October 2012 restraining J.D. from dealing with a particular property or its sale proceeds. Three days later, the Irish High Court made an ex parte order temporarily restraining him from dealing with assets pending the English proceedings. A further order on 19 October accepted an undertaking from J.D. in the terms of the earlier Irish order. M.M. gave an undertaking as to damages. On 7 December, the Irish orders were continued without prejudice to J.D.’s challenge to the court’s jurisdiction.
The court said the parties agreed that J.D.’s earlier divorce, granted in England on 5 May 1994, was not recognised in Ireland because of his domicile. That prevented M.M. from relying on specified provisions of Irish family law, but the judge held it did not prevent her from relying on the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction to grant an injunction against disposal of assets in Ireland while the substantive proceedings continued in England.
The judge found that the relevant European regulations and the English order provided sufficient comity to invoke the Irish court’s jurisdiction. The court also noted that J.D. might already have disposed of his interest in the property and any proceeds, and that the English order covered only that asset, not other assets. It made no final determination on whether an injunction should issue.