The High Court has adjourned a dispute over whether three tax judgment mortgages can be enforced against land in County Mayo, saying the ownership issues must be resolved before it can proceed. The court proposed joining Hill View Farms Ltd. as a co-defendant and listed the matter for 19 March 2013.
The special summons was brought in 2010 by the then Collector General of the Revenue Commissioners against Henry Dixon. The mortgages were registered against his interest in two Mayo properties. By consent in July 2010, the court declared the debt secured by the mortgages well charged on one property, Folio 44622F, and made related orders. The remaining dispute concerns Folio 11401.
Dixon says he has no beneficial interest in Folio 11401. He says he transferred his interest to Hill View Farms in 2003 and that the company held the legal and beneficial ownership thereafter. He relied on company accounts, farm payment records, bank statements and tax returns as evidence of the company’s ownership and use of the land.
The title history and earlier litigation complicated that claim. In 2004, Emo Oil Ltd. obtained an order declaring the purported transfer to Hill View Farms void and obtained a well charging order. In 2006, the High Court ordered the Land Registry to reinstate Dixon as owner. Later that year, on a motion brought by Emo, the court discharged its June 2004 order and struck out the proceedings. The 2012 judgment said the 2006 discharge appeared to include the declaration that the transfer was void, but the order reinstating Dixon on the register had not itself been discharged.
The court also noted that Hill View Farms had been dissolved in 2005 for failing to file annual returns and was restored to the register around mid-2012, though the precise restoration date was not proved. Dixon was its sole member and a director. The judge observed that the company had a separate legal personality and was not a party to the current proceedings.
The judge said evidence suggested Hill View Farms may have been the beneficial owner when the tax mortgages were registered. If so, Dixon may have had no interest in the land that could be captured by a well charging order. But the company was not before the court, and the ownership issue could not be left to the Examiner to determine.
The court did not decide whether the mortgages could be enforced against Folio 11401 or make a sale order in relation to it. On its own motion, it proposed joining Hill View Farms and adjourned the case to allow the parties to address the identified issues. It also said the plaintiff should consider whether the case title should name the current Collector General instead of the former office-holder.