The Court of Appeal has dismissed three appeals arising from proceedings brought by Michael and John O’Flynn and a group of companies against Carbon Finance Limited and other defendants. The court gave its reasons on 19 February 2015 for dismissing the appeals on 24 November 2014.
In the first appeal, the plaintiffs challenged an order striking out their claims insofar as those claims concerned five group facility agreements with exclusive jurisdiction clauses in favour of the English courts. The Court of Appeal upheld that order. It held that Carbon Finance’s unconditional appearance on 1 August 2014 related to the claim as then set out in the summons, which concerned a different agreement and did not refer to the five agreements. The plaintiffs had not shown an express waiver, and the circumstances they relied on did not establish an implied waiver. The court also upheld the order against two later-joined defendants, who had entered conditional appearances to contest jurisdiction.
The second appeal was brought by Carbon Finance and the seventh defendant against the refusal to strike out claims for conspiracy and other economic torts because of insufficient particulars. The Court of Appeal dismissed their appeal. It considered that the pleadings gave a sufficient general account of the alleged coordinated conduct and its claimed economic consequences for this stage of the proceedings. Details about who made decisions and what steps were taken might emerge through discovery. The court stressed that the claims could still fail if the necessary proof did not emerge.
The final appeal concerned an ex parte order allowing a concurrent summons to be issued and served outside Ireland on the sixth defendant, The Blackstone Group L.P., a limited partnership with a registered office in New York. The Court of Appeal set aside the High Court’s reasoning that the order could rest on the rule for a necessary or proper party, because the claim against Blackstone was in tort and had to satisfy the specific rule for tort claims. It then considered that claim under the correct rule and dismissed Blackstone’s appeal. The order permitting service outside the jurisdiction therefore remained in place. The court found the tort claims sufficiently particularised at this early stage and the plaintiffs’ evidence about trying related claims together in Ireland sufficient in the circumstances.
All three appeals were dismissed. The ruling addressed the procedural applications before the court; it did not determine whether the plaintiffs’ underlying allegations were proved.