The High Court has refused Dardania Holdings Limited its costs of obtaining an interim injunction against Advanced Life Safety, trading as Advanced Fire Protection, and ruled that the defendant is entitled to its costs of responding to the order.
In a ruling on 31 August 2021, Mr Justice Mark Heslin said those costs were payable because the plaintiff had failed to make full and frank disclosure when seeking the injunction and because the application lacked merit. The amount of costs was left for agreement between the parties or adjudication if they could not agree. The judge invited them to agree the form of order, with a further hearing if necessary.
The injunction was granted without notice to the defendant on 2 September 2020. It required the company to hand over keys, alarm codes and other access information for fire alarm systems at four properties. Dardania had told the court that there was an urgent fire-safety concern, particularly at a mixed-use Meath Street property, and that the defendant’s engineer’s code was needed to address it.
The judge found that the defendant had offered on 20 August to send an engineer to reset the panels to their manufacturer codes for €150 plus VAT per site visit. That would give Dardania access without disclosing the defendant’s own engineer’s code. The offer was not included in the material presented with the ex parte application. The judge said the plaintiff’s director had later affirmed the contents of the grounding affidavit but had not explained the omission.
The defendant also said the same reset offer had been made verbally on 22 July. The plaintiff’s counsel challenged that account, noting that the emails from that day did not mention it and that the person said to have made the verbal offer had not sworn an affidavit. The judge accepted the defendant director’s uncontested evidence, supported by the wording of the 20 August email, and found the offer had been made on both dates.
The judge rejected the submission that a letter sent by Dardania’s solicitors on 20 August accepted the offer. He found it demanded alarm codes for all four properties and did not arrange an engineer visit or provide the full payment requested. He also noted that Dardania later used a third-party fire-safety firm to resolve the issue without the defendant’s engineer’s code.
The injunction was vacated on 5 October 2020 after short submissions, when Dardania did not oppose its discharge. The judge said the underlying proceedings had been resolved, subject to costs. His ruling addressed the costs dispute and did not determine the underlying contractual claims.