The High Court has ordered interim protections in a dispute over a Spanish villa, while dismissing applications seeking committal for contempt against two defendants. Mr Justice Kennedy said the contempt applications could not succeed because the settlement clauses relied on were not specific directions in the court order.
The dispute concerns a villa in Malaga where the applicant’s parents had lived since 1975. Under a 2020 settlement between brothers Andrew Fried and Philip Fried, the Spanish company owning the villa was to transfer it to their mother, Janis Fried. The settlement also required Andrew Fried to use best endeavours to arrange a tax efficient transfer. A consent order made in January 2021 included the settlement as a schedule and gave the parties liberty to apply to enforce it.
The transfer had not taken place. Philip Fried alleged that the defendants had obstructed it, including through steps affecting the Spanish company and eviction proceedings against the parents. Andrew Fried and his wife, notice party Felicity Fried, denied breaching the settlement. They argued that shares in the company had been transferred to their children and that their responsibilities toward the children’s assets constrained their ability to arrange the transfer. Felicity Fried also argued that she had agreed only to provisions concerning the couple’s Galway home.
Justice Kennedy found a strong case that Felicity Fried was bound by the settlement as a whole. He concluded that her January 2021 solicitor’s letters did not vary the agreement, and that her conduct supported a case that Andrew Fried had authority to sign it for her. He also found a strong case that the settlement required the parties to procure the villa’s transfer, and that the defendants may have breached that obligation and a separate clause barring further steps concerning the company pending transfer.
Those conclusions were provisional. The judge said the disputed questions—including whether the defendants could lawfully arrange the transfer and whether the 2020 share transfer was a sham—required fuller evidence and cross-examination. He made no final determination on those matters.
The judge dismissed both contempt applications. He held that breach of settlement terms not set out as specific directions in the order did not, by itself, amount to contempt. He also concluded that the contempt application against Felicity Fried was defective because a properly addressed penal notice was served only after that application had issued.
The court nevertheless granted interim injunctive relief against Felicity Fried. The order restrains her and her agents from taking steps concerning the Spanish company or villa that would frustrate the settlement, and requires her to take every lawful step within her power to have the company administrator suspend or withdraw eviction proceedings pending transfer. The order does not require anything impossible or unlawful. An earlier injunction against Andrew Fried remains in force.