The Court of Appeal has dismissed Anthony Sheedy’s challenge to Everyday Finance DAC’s entitlement to enforce a €2.6 million High Court judgment originally obtained by Allied Irish Banks.
The dispute arose from lending advanced by AIB beginning in 2004. After Sheedy defaulted, AIB secured summary judgment in June 2017 for €2,601,519.20 plus costs. Separate possession proceedings concerned two charged properties in County Tipperary.
Those possession proceedings were settled at Clonmel Circuit Court in October 2018. Sheedy consented to a possession order, stayed for 18 months, and agreed to place the properties on the market. The agreement recorded sums then due on two loan accounts and required him to withdraw his pending Court of Appeal challenge to the 2017 judgment and pay specified legal costs.
No property was subsequently sold and the debt remained unpaid. In June 2019 AIB transferred relevant loans, securities and associated rights to Everyday Finance.
The central issue on appeal was whether the 2018 settlement had replaced or extinguished the 2017 High Court judgment. Ms Justice Máire Whelan held that it had not.
The court said the settlement was principally concerned with an orderly realisation of the secured Tipperary properties. Nothing in its wording stated that the earlier judgment was being set aside. On the contrary, Sheedy agreed to abandon his appeal against that judgment and to pay AIB’s High Court and appeal costs, steps the court regarded as inconsistent with an intention to extinguish it.
The Court of Appeal also upheld the finding that AIB’s interest in the loan and judgment had validly passed to Everyday. This allowed Everyday to be substituted as plaintiff and seek execution of the 2017 judgment.
The ruling is confined to the €2,601,519.20 judgment sum. Any separate claim by Everyday for additional contractual interest under the 2018 settlement would require different proceedings.
The appeal was dismissed on all grounds, with Everyday provisionally entitled to its appeal costs.