The High Court has set aside three orders made in a dispute over a tenancy at Blackhall House Stud in Co. Wexford, ruling that the receiver over the property should have been served with the tenant’s proceedings after treating the tenancy as valid.
In a judgment delivered on 10 June 2015, Ms Justice Murphy considered the receiver’s application to undo orders made in default of appearance in proceedings brought by Paul Collins against Joan Cummins and Francis (Franny) Moore. The court was dealing with that application only; two other motions before it were not determined.
The dispute concerned a residential tenancy agreement signed by Ms Cummins and Mr Collins in October 2011. The property was mortgaged to the bank, and the mortgage terms required written consent before it could be let. The receiver, Neil Hughes, was appointed in May 2012. He initially denied that the tenancy was valid, but later served Mr Collins with a notice of termination in November 2013 that described him as a tenant under the agreement.
Mr Collins’s proceedings named the owners but not the receiver. In February 2014, the High Court entered judgment for €72,864.78 in default of appearance. In April, it declared that Mr Collins was entitled to two years’ peaceful enjoyment of the property from that date and ordered that any rent owed be set off against the judgment sum.
Justice Murphy held that, by treating the agreement as valid and seeking to terminate it, the receiver had become the appropriate person to defend proceedings concerning the lease. The court said he was entitled to be served as a party, not merely given notice. Because the de facto landlord was not a party when the earlier orders were made, those orders were irregularly obtained.
The court set aside the order deeming service of the proceedings good, the February judgment and the April declaration. It also observed that an appearance entered after judgment, without the court’s leave, was a nullity. The application concerning that appearance was effectively moot once the earlier orders were set aside.
The judgment did not decide whether Mr Collins was entitled to pursue his claim. Justice Murphy said that if he wished to pursue it outside the landlord-and-tenant process, he would need to take the necessary steps to serve the receiver. The court expressed no view on his entitlement to do so.