The High Court admitted affidavits from Bank of Ireland Mortgage Bank employees for the hearing of two motions, rejecting Eoin Beakey’s objections to how the affidavits described the deponent’s address and recorded the swearing details.
The ruling by Ms Justice Faherty, delivered on 2 October 2018, addresses the admissibility of the affidavits. It does not determine the bank’s application to dismiss Beakey’s claim or the relief sought in his own motion.
Beakey’s claim alleges that the bank’s earlier possession proceedings were malicious and an abuse of process, and pleads fraud, neglect, deceit and breaches of duty. The bank denies liability and seeks dismissal, arguing that the claim is barred by res judicata or the rule in Henderson v Henderson, discloses no reasonable cause of action, and is frivolous, vexatious or inadequately particularised.
The earlier possession proceedings concerned a residential property owned by Beakey and mortgaged to the bank. The Circuit Court struck out the bank’s possession claim in November 2015. On appeal, the High Court granted the bank possession in February 2016 and stayed the order for three months. A later application by Beakey to set that order aside was dismissed with costs.
In the current proceedings, Beakey objected to affidavits by Helen Dorris, a bank legal officer, because they gave her workplace address rather than her home address. He also argued that the affidavits did not comply with court rules because they omitted the time of day they were sworn. The bank said the workplace address was appropriate for an employee swearing an affidavit in that capacity and relied on the court’s power to receive an affidavit despite a defect in its form.
Justice Faherty followed Court of Appeal decisions holding that a business address can satisfy the requirement to state a deponent’s “place of abode”. She also found sufficient compliance with the rule on recording when and where affidavits are sworn, noting that the commissioner for oaths identified Dorris and that the place and date were stated. In any event, she said, the court could admit the affidavits despite any such irregularity.
The court admitted Dorris’s affidavits and an affidavit from bank manager Sean Buckley for use at the substantive hearing of the two motions. The judgment does not state the outcome of those motions.