The High Court has ordered that Consortio Limited’s latest proceedings over common areas at St Angela’s Student Residence in County Sligo be dismissed as an abuse of process.
Consortio owns 22 of the development’s 72 student apartments at Clogherrevagh and holds about 30.5% of the owners’ management company. Its latest case alleged that Slishwood Property Holdings Limited failed to transfer all common areas which should have passed to the management company, including parts of an ancillary building, accessways, parking and the wastewater treatment plant.
Slishwood argued that Consortio had already raised that dispute in earlier Circuit Court proceedings against the owners’ management company. Those proceedings were settled in April 2022 alongside a separate claim for service-charge arrears.
Mr Justice Mark Dunne agreed. He found that the earlier pleadings expressly challenged the extent of the common-area transfer and sought orders under the Multi-unit Developments Act concerning the scope of those areas.
The court also rejected Consortio’s contention that the earlier case was really limited to governance, service charges and access issues. Correspondence exchanged before settlement repeatedly identified the scope and validity of the common-area transfer as a substantive issue.
Consortio argued that it did not receive the actual 2021 deed transferring the common areas until July 2022, three months after settlement. The judge held that this did not amount to a special circumstance justifying the new action. Long before settlement, Consortio knew that Slishwood claimed ownership of the ancillary block and had expressly considered joining Slishwood to the earlier proceedings.
Although Slishwood was not formally a defendant in that first case, the court found sufficient identity of interest between it and the management company for the Henderson v Henderson rule to apply. The same directors controlled both companies, and the earlier claim directly concerned Slishwood’s transfer of the common areas.
The High Court therefore allowed Slishwood’s appeal from the Circuit Court and dismissed Consortio’s proceedings. Final orders and costs were left for a later hearing.