The Court of Appeal has refused an application to suspend enforcement in Ireland of two Bulgarian court judgments while Henry Alexander Brompton Gwyn-Jones sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. The judgments, issued in 2016 and 2017, were in favour of Richard William McDonald.
The appeals concerned recognition and enforcement of judgments under the EU’s Recast Brussels Regulation. The appellant sought an interim order restraining enforcement. The court said the agreed test required arguable grounds of appeal and, if that threshold was met, consideration of where the balance of justice lay.
Delivering the judgment on 17 January 2022, Mr Justice Murray said the appellant had not established an arguable ground on any of three issues: service of proceedings, public policy, or whether enforcement should be stayed pending applications to Bulgaria’s Supreme Court to set aside the judgments. The court said the Bulgarian court had already rejected the appellant’s service challenges. It also concluded that the fraud arguments raised in Ireland concerned defences on the merits for the Bulgarian courts, and that some allegations were unsupported by evidence.
The court further held that the pending set-aside applications in Bulgaria were not “ordinary appeals” that would permit a stay under Article 51 of the Regulation. It noted that the Bulgarian courts had not granted a stay and that the appellant had not applied there for one.
The appellant argued that enforcement could make a Supreme Court appeal moot and that a short suspension would cause limited prejudice, including because the judgments continued to accrue interest. The court acknowledged those considerations but said they were outweighed by the weakness of the proposed appeal, the judgments’ prima facie validity, and the EU requirement for swift enforcement. It also noted the appellant had not offered to secure the outstanding sums, despite evidence that he owned property in Ireland which he valued at at least €26 million.
The application for a further suspension was refused. The court said the respondent was entitled to costs of the appeals and High Court hearings. It made no costs order on two motions in the second appeal, on which the appellant had succeeded. Costs of the stay application were provisionally to follow the outcome, with the appellant given seven days to file a reasoned objection.