The Court of Appeal has dismissed appeals by Gabriel Petrut and Margaret Hanrahan against High Court injunctions requiring the immediate surrender of two Dublin properties to Pepper Finance Corporation (Ireland) DAC.
The appeals concerned the High Court’s decision to hear Pepper’s application on 25 November 2020 when neither appellant was present. The Court of Appeal held that the judge was not wrong to proceed. It dismissed the appeals and ruled that Pepper was entitled to its appeal costs, while allowing either appellant to make written submissions seeking a different costs order.
The injunctions relate to 31 Richmond Avenue and 21 Little Mary Street. The High Court orders required the defendants to hand over possession and the properties’ keys and access devices. They also restrained them from obstructing Pepper’s control, sale or rental of the properties, collecting rent, or presenting themselves as entitled to grant possession.
The properties had been mortgaged to 11B Homeloans in 2003 to secure a €1.2 million loan to Jerry Beades. A High Court possession order followed in 2008, and the Supreme Court dismissed Beades’s appeal in 2014. The legal interest in the loan and mortgages later passed to Pepper.
Pepper said it had written to occupants from 2019 seeking their identities and documents supporting their occupation. The High Court directed service of the application by leaving copies addressed to “The Occupants”. Both appellants entered appearances two days before the hearing but did not attend. Hanrahan had asked Pepper’s solicitors for an adjournment in a letter, citing recovery from surgery; Petrut gave no explanation for not attending. The Court of Appeal said the record did not make clear whether the High Court judge had been unaware of Hanrahan’s letter, but concluded that this did not change the result. It also noted that no medical evidence had been provided.
The appellants’ grounds focused on the hearing proceeding in their absence, including claims that they had not been properly informed it would be in person and had been denied an adjournment. The court said there was no evidence supporting those claims and no right to an adjournment had been established. An allegation of judicial bias was not pursued at the appeal hearing.
The appellants also argued that the High Court had not been told about a facility-letter clause setting conditions for the lender’s consent to tenancies. The Court of Appeal agreed that the clause should have been specifically brought to the judge’s attention, but found the appellants had not shown how it could assist them: neither claimed to have occupied the properties before the 2008 possession order. It said this issue could not overcome the limited procedural grounds of appeal.
The Court of Appeal dismissed both appeals. Any written submissions on an alternative costs order must be filed within 14 days of electronic delivery of the judgment; Pepper may respond within a further 14 days.