The High Court has deferred a final decision on Pepper Finance’s bid for possession of two County Wexford properties after raising questions about the circumstances in which owner Anne Coleman guaranteed substantial loans to her son and daughter-in-law.
Ms Justice Siobhán Stack delivered judgment on 18 December 2025. Coleman had guaranteed Bank of Ireland lending up to €820,000 in February 2008 and later granted charges over her lands in January 2009. The benefit of those arrangements was subsequently transferred to Pepper, which was substituted as plaintiff in January 2025.
Coleman argued that she had entered the transactions under undue influence and that the guarantee and charges should also be examined under EU rules protecting consumers from unfair contract terms.
The judge found that Coleman’s evidence of undue influence was too thin and unparticularised, standing alone, to justify sending the case to a full plenary hearing. However, she said the surrounding circumstances raised a separate concern about whether the transactions could amount to an unconscionable bargain.
Coleman had received no independent legal advice. The loans were advanced to her son and daughter-in-law for property development, not to Coleman herself, and the court noted that she appeared to derive no direct benefit from the arrangements.
Stack J also found it probable that Coleman qualified as a consumer for the purposes of the EU Unfair Terms Directive because she was not acting in the course of any trade or business.
That finding requires the court to examine of its own motion whether contractual terms were fair. The judge said the absence of legal advice was particularly important to whether the guarantee and charges had been expressed to Coleman in plain, intelligible language.
The parties were given liberty to file further affidavits and documents explaining how the guarantee and charges came to be signed. The court has not yet decided whether Pepper is entitled to possession.