A Supreme Court judge has concluded that Bank of Ireland Mortgage Bank was entitled to recover from fisherman Brian Murray money from a 2007 loan which benefited him even though he had not agreed to be a borrower.
Mr Justice Maurice Collins, delivering a judgment on June 4, 2025, agreed with Ms Justice Dunne that Murray’s appeal should be rejected and the Court of Appeal orders affirmed. He noted that the Supreme Court was divided on the outcome.
The High Court had found that the bank advanced the loan believing Brian and Attracta Murray were joint borrowers and that their family home secured the debt. In fact, Brian Murray had not signed the relevant loan documents.
Collins J said the evidence showed that Murray nevertheless received substantial benefits from the money. Loan proceeds were used to discharge his tax liabilities, fund a payment connected with a social welfare scheme for his benefit, purchase a field and repay an earlier loan used to buy a Spanish apartment for the couple. Payments also benefited their children.
The judge held that the bank’s mistaken belief that Murray was a co-borrower was a recognised basis for an unjust enrichment claim. In ordinary terms, unjust enrichment allows recovery where a person has received a benefit at another’s expense in circumstances recognised by law as unjust.
Collins J rejected the argument that the bank should lose its remedy because a branch manager had wrongly purported to witness Murray’s signature on an internal document. He said the bank itself had been misled and there was insufficient basis to treat it as a participant in fraud or deception.
He also rejected arguments based on consumer-credit public policy and change of position. Murray had not shown that he incurred extraordinary expenditure because of receiving the money, rather than spending it in what he believed was the ordinary course of family finances.
Collins J therefore concluded that the bank had established unjust enrichment and that Murray had not proved any recognised defence to restitution.