The High Court has dismissed Havbell Designated Activity Company’s claim against Martin O’Hanlon and Ann O’Hanlon after finding that the summary proceedings had been delayed excessively, without a reasonable explanation.
Mr Justice MacGrath delivered the judgment on 31 July 2018. The defendants had applied to dismiss the case for want of prosecution. The court granted that application, concluding that the delay was inordinate and inexcusable and that requiring the defendants to defend the claim after more than 11 years would be inequitable.
The proceedings began with a summary summons issued on 22 April 2008. It sought €156,652.08, said to be the balance due on accounts involving loans advanced to the defendants. The summons concerned two loans. Havbell had acquired one of them; the court noted that the defendants were thereby relieved, if they had any obligation, of the claim for €25,483.91 relating to the other loan, which belonged to another party.
The defendants said they had refinanced their mortgage borrowing in 2004 and received letters stating that the mortgages had been discharged. They said Permanent TSB later claimed that a loan secured on a property in Glasnevin remained unpaid. Their account was evidence put before the court, not a finding on whether the loan had been repaid. The court did not decide the underlying debt dispute.
The defendants entered an appearance in April 2008. No further step was taken in the proceedings until June 2018, when the Master of the High Court allowed the title to be amended following the transfer of the relevant loan and proceedings to Havbell in 2016. The plaintiff filed no affidavit explaining the earlier delay. Its counsel accepted that the delay was inordinate but argued that Havbell’s involvement excused it, and that the defendants had not raised delay until 2017.
The judge rejected that explanation. A party taking over a loan and its litigation also assumed the prior litigant’s obligations, including the duty to progress the case promptly. The court stressed that summary proceedings should be advanced with due dispatch. It found general prejudice in the burden of having proceedings hang over the defendants for more than 11 years and held that the balance of justice favoured dismissal.
The order dismissed the proceedings for excessive, inordinate and inexcusable delay. It did not determine whether the amount claimed was in fact owed.