The High Court has directed limited cross-examination of witnesses in a winding-up dispute involving Anvil Real Estate Limited and a contested €551,000 payment connected with a Dublin property.
Ms Justice Nessa Cahill ruled on November 19 that the case fell within the exceptional category in which cross-examination was necessary for the fair determination of the petition. The substantive application to wind up Anvil remains unresolved.
The dispute centres on money transferred by the petitioner to the account of Anvil's solicitor on November 30, 2020. The payment was used in connection with discharging finance secured over Villa Marina on Kenilworth Road, Dublin.
The petitioner says the €551,000 was an interest-free loan repayable on demand. Anvil, through its sole director Mr Somerville, says the money was advanced as an investment in return for shares. Its alternative position is that, even if the payment was a loan, it was not repayable on demand.
A demand for payment was sent to the company on September 7, 2024. The petitioner later sought to have Anvil deemed unable to pay its debts under the Companies Act 2014.
The judge said winding-up petitions are normally dealt with quickly and on affidavit, and cross-examination should remain rare. However, both sides had directly challenged the credibility and reliability of the other's evidence, while there was little contemporaneous documentation recording the terms on which the money was advanced.
The court therefore confined cross-examination to the central questions: whether the payment was a loan or consideration for shares and, if it was a loan, whether it was repayable on demand.
Ms Justice Cahill stressed that the order does not turn the petition into a full trial of the former business associates' wider disputes. The matter was listed for November 25 for submissions on the precise orders and costs, with the judge provisionally indicating that each motion's costs should be costs in the cause.