The High Court has upheld Ossory Road Enterprise Park Ltd’s title to nine units at Ossory Industrial Estate in Dublin 3, awarded it €150,000 in damages and dismissed a counterclaim challenging the sale.
In a judgment delivered on 31 July 2024, Mr Justice Oisín Quinn found that OREP acquired the property from a receiver in December 2021 after the units were sold at auction. The defendants, Declan Rogers and Rogers Recycling Ltd, failed to establish that the title was defective or that the sale was the product of a conspiracy to exclude a bidder.
The court found no credible evidence of a conspiracy involving OREP, lender Everyday Finance DAC, the receiver or auctioneer BidX1. The judge noted that the alleged co-conspirators had not been joined to the counterclaim and no non-party discovery had been sought from them.
The defendants also argued that a 21-year lease of Unit 1 to Rogers Recycling, dated 30 January 2014, bound OREP. The court found the purported lease was not genuinely operated and that there was no prior written consent from AIB, as required by the mortgage. The judge found that a letter presented as AIB’s written consent, dated 10 March 2014, was fabricated and that Rogers had introduced it to mislead the court. The judgment records that a Garda investigation into the letter was already under way following a complaint by OREP’s solicitor.
The court found that Rogers had interfered with OREP’s efforts to take possession and collect rent, including collecting rent after an earlier court order barred him and Rogers Recycling from doing so at Unit 1. The judge assessed damages by reference to rental figures in a letter Rogers’s agent had sent to AIB, while allowing for possible vacancies and that the figures might have been overstated. He awarded OREP €150,000 jointly and severally against both defendants.
The court ordered the first and third defendants to stay off the property, stop interfering with occupiers or demanding payments, and stop advertising units for rent. It declared the purported lease invalid and Rogers Recycling not a tenant, barred the company from collecting rent from Unit 1 occupiers, and directed that money held by the defendants’ solicitors under earlier orders or undertakings be paid to OREP’s solicitors toward the damages. The counterclaim was dismissed. The judge said he would hear the parties on costs and other matters. He also proposed asking the court registrar to refer the judgment and purported letter to gardaí for further investigation into whether offences may have been committed; the judgment does not record a criminal charge or finding.