The High Court has struck out Edmund Heaphy’s claim against the Governor and Company of the Bank of Ireland, which sought declarations, injunctions and damages exceeding €55 million. Mr Justice Rory Mulcahy ruled on 31 May 2024 that the claim disclosed no reasonable cause of action, was bound to fail and was an abuse of process.
The judgment dealt with three motions: the Bank’s application to dismiss the proceedings and vacate a lis pendens registered over a Cork property; Mr Heaphy’s application for judgment in default of defence; and his request to add the Bank’s current and former auditors as defendants. The court refused Mr Heaphy’s applications. It refused to vacate the lis pendens, finding it was unclear whether the Bank remained a person affected by it after transferring its interest in the facilities and related securities.
Mr Heaphy alleged, among other things, that the Bank had used mortgage charges as collateral to obtain funding and had fixed their value in breach of competition law. He also alleged accounting breaches and collusion by third parties. The judge found no basis for the claim that the Bank had made him personally liable for its own borrowing, and said valuing assets as collateral did not amount to price-fixing under the Competition Act 2002.
The court also found that the claims concerned conduct said to have occurred by 2015 and were out of time. The judgment noted that the relevant information, on Mr Heaphy’s own account, had been in the public domain since a Bank chief executive’s statement in November 2012. It further held that he could not use the proceedings to challenge final orders made in earlier cases or raise arguments that could and should have been brought then.
Those earlier proceedings included a 2011 summary judgment for €768,013.67 on personal guarantees, upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018; a 2013 judgment for €1,386,690.89 on loans and an overdraft; and a 2017 possession order concerning the property, affirmed by the High Court on appeal in 2019. The Bank took possession in April 2022.
The judge said the 2022 auditors’ report cited by Mr Heaphy identified audit risks but also recorded that the auditors considered management’s significant judgments reasonable. He found no basis to join the auditors, observing that the application appeared directed at prompting an investigation into the Bank’s conduct rather than pursuing a claim against them.
The 31 May judgment stated that final orders would be made after the case was listed on 14 June 2024. It did not itself record those final orders.