The Court of Appeal has allowed an appeal and set aside a High Court order awarding damages to Mary Egan and Paul Barron in a dispute with Noel Thomas Richard Heatley over a contract for the sale of land.
In a judgment delivered on 14 December 2020, Mr Justice Maurice Collins agreed with Mr Justice Murray’s judgment and proposed order. Collins J added observations on the damages issue. The appeal court held that the plaintiffs’ only damages claim at trial was for damages in lieu of specific performance under section 2 of the Chancery Amendment Act 1858. They had told the High Court they no longer sought to complete the purchase.
The High Court had found that documents relied on for parts of the damages claim were fake. Collins J noted that those documents accounted for nearly €70,000, more than half the total claim. They included an invoice for professional fees that did not relate to an actual liability and had been made long after the event, as well as an invoice for glazing units that gave a former residence of the plaintiffs as the supplier’s address.
The High Court nevertheless concluded that the documents did not affect its discretion to award damages because Heatley’s refusal to complete the sale predated and had no connection to them. Collins J disagreed with that approach. He said the plaintiffs’ reliance on the documents to advance their sole claim was directly relevant to whether the court should grant discretionary damages, even though the documents were unrelated to the contract or the refusal to complete.
Collins J said a substantial part of the claim was false and advanced on fabricated evidence. He concluded that, in the circumstances, it was not fit to award damages under section 2 and that the plaintiffs’ conduct disentitled them from that relief. He stressed that the appeal did not concern any claim for common-law damages for breach of contract, which the plaintiffs had not made, and expressed no view on whether their conduct would have barred such a claim.
The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and set aside the High Court order. The judgment also referred to further reasons in Murray J’s judgment; the source provided here contains Collins J’s judgment only.