The High Court has ordered Ardstone Capital Limited to disclose documents concerning former employee John Daly’s claimed share of a property fund’s profits and to provide a sworn account of emails deleted from his work account. The court refused the other parts of Daly’s application for further and better discovery.
Daly claims he was promised 5% of the profits, known as the “Promote”, from Ardstone’s Added Value Fund (AVP), and that the share was increased to 10% in 2015. Ardstone denies any such agreement. The fund involved seven commercial properties in Dublin. The judgment addressed discovery in the parties’ ongoing proceedings; it did not decide whether Daly was entitled to the profit share.
The court ordered Ardstone to discover a spreadsheet shown at a Workplace Relations Commission hearing, which referred to Daly having 5% and 10% shares, and the email with which it was sent to Ardstone. It also ordered discovery of any other documents relating to the entitlement or promise Daly alleges. The judge said disclosure would not amount to Ardstone accepting that the promise was made.
The court also ordered disclosure of all residential investment presentations issued that included Daly’s profile. It rejected his request for other drafts and slides because the evidence did not establish that the documents existed and remained undisclosed. It likewise refused requests concerning employees said to be in the same category or position as Daly, work connected with the fund at the time of his dismissal, and projects outside the funds. The judge found that the application did not establish the required basis for further discovery on those issues, which included disputed facts unsupported by sworn evidence.
A separate issue concerned the deletion of Daly’s emails. The judge found that the original discovery affidavit failed to mention the deleted emails, although the second schedule should have identified documents that had once been held but were no longer available and explained what happened to them. Later affidavits and correspondence had not clarified when the emails were deleted or how they were recovered.
Ardstone must swear an affidavit stating when Daly’s email account was shut down and his emails deleted, when retrieval began, who carried it out and how, how many emails were recovered or not recovered, and what the unrecovered emails concerned, including their relation to the ordered discovery categories. The affidavit is due within eight weeks of the judgment, subject to Ardstone’s right to apply to change that period. All other aspects of the application were refused. The parties were directed to submit their positions on costs within 14 days if they could not agree.