The High Court has lifted a stay on a one-month prison sentence for a defendant who again occupied a property despite court orders requiring him to leave and not obstruct its marketing and sale.
In a ruling delivered on 7 May 2015, Mr Justice David Keane ordered the defendant committed to Mountjoy Prison for one month. He said the defendant had not shown that he was complying with, or intended to comply with, an injunction made in February 2014.
The injunction, granted in proceedings brought by Pepper Finance Corporation (Ireland) Limited, required the defendant to stay off a property in County Cork, refrain from interfering with its marketing and sale, remove his possessions and hand over its keys and vacant possession. The order was initially stayed to allow him time to leave.
The judgment records that the defendant had previously delivered possession to the plaintiff in July 2013, but the company contended that he had reoccupied the property by November that year. Further orders in May 2014 recorded undertakings by the defendant to vacate by specified dates. A separate High Court order in July 2014 found him in contempt and ordered his detention until he purged that contempt. Execution was stayed, but he was later arrested and imprisoned. He was released in October 2014; the judgment says he did not seek to purge his contempt.
The latest application followed the defendant’s presence at and occupation of the property on 4 November 2014, which he admitted. Justice Keane found that this breached the injunction’s requirements not to trespass and not to obstruct or interfere with the sale.
The judge imposed the one-month sentence on 27 November 2014, describing imprisonment as a last resort and the breach as serious, flagrant and deliberate. He said there was no suggestion that the defendant was unable, rather than unwilling, to comply. The sentence was stayed initially for two weeks and extended from time to time to give the defendant a final chance to comply.
The judge said uncontroverted evidence for the plaintiff showed the defendant trespassed again on 18 February 2015 and was in occupation when legal documents were served on him at the property on 19 March 2015. He said this continued to obstruct and interfere with the company’s marketing and sale. The ruling lifts the stay and directs that the defendant be detained for one month. It does not determine the underlying claim for permanent injunctions and trespass damages.