The Court of Appeal has dismissed two appeals by Laurence O’Toole, Donal O’Toole and James O’Toole against summary judgments for AIB and AIB Mortgage Bank totalling more than €12.8 million.
The judgments, granted by the High Court on 20 January 2017, were for €12,043,075 in AIB’s case and €776,159.64 in AIB Mortgage Bank’s case. The banks sought repayment of loans they said the defendants had accepted and failed to repay after demands were issued.
The defendants argued that the loans were intended to be limited recourse, so the banks could recover only against the secured properties. They said the banks had taken possession of those properties. The banks denied giving such assurances and said the defendants were confusing the personal loans in these proceedings with separate limited-recourse loans to their company, Burgrove Limited.
The Court of Appeal noted that the loan offer letters made no reference to limited recourse. It found the documents cited by the defendants concerned Burgrove’s earlier facilities, not the loans at issue. The court concluded there was no cogent documentary evidence of a collateral agreement that could support an arguable defence. It upheld the High Court’s refusal to send the cases to a full hearing on that ground.
The defendants also challenged whether the named banks were entitled to sue, pointing to transfers involving mortgage securities in January 2015 and arguing that the underlying loans may also have been transferred. The banks said the transfers concerned security interests only and that the loans themselves were not transferred.
The Court of Appeal said the transfer issue had been raised only shortly before the High Court hearing, with little supporting detail and no opportunity then for the banks to respond. The court considered affidavits later filed in the appeal’s stay application, but found no evidence that the loans had been transferred. It said the issue could be determined from the documents and did not require a plenary hearing.
The court dismissed both appeals. The decision addressed whether the defendants had shown an arguable defence sufficient to require a full hearing; it did not order a new trial.