The High Court has refused an application by Gayle Dunne to halt proceedings brought by the Official Assignee in Sean Dunne’s Irish bankruptcy, rejecting arguments that Ireland was the wrong forum or that the case was an abuse of process.
The ruling, delivered by Ms Justice Costello on 27 July 2016, concerns the procedural future of the proceedings. It does not decide whether the disputed transfers were valid or whether assets were fraudulently transferred.
The Official Assignee, Christopher Lehane, is seeking to set aside two agreements allegedly made between Mr Dunne and his wife in 2005 and 2008, along with subsequent asset transfers said to be worth about €100 million. The claims include transfers of loans and shares connected to Irish company Mavior, the Lagoon Beach Hotel in South Africa and other Irish properties. These remain claims to be determined, not findings in this ruling.
Ms Dunne argued that the issues should be heard in the United States, where Mr Dunne also has a bankruptcy proceeding and a trustee has brought a broader case. She said parallel litigation would be costly and risk conflicting decisions. The High Court noted that an earlier US adversary proceeding focused on Mavior loans and shares had been dismissed after the Irish bankruptcy was confirmed; Ms Dunne had consented to that dismissal.
Justice Costello found that the Irish proceedings had the most real and substantial connection to the dispute. Irish law applied, and evidence about Mr Dunne’s solvency would involve Irish companies, property and valuations. The judge also found that the defendant had not shown that a US court was a distinctly more appropriate forum. The existence of litigation in several jurisdictions, by itself, did not determine where this particular case should proceed.
The court also rejected the abuse of process argument. The parallel US proceeding had not gone to trial, so the rule concerning successive proceedings after a decision in an earlier case did not apply. The judge accepted that the Official Assignee and the US trustee were cooperating and that the trustee intended to remove claims that duplicated the Irish action. She said possible overlap could be addressed through agreement or case management.
The court refused both the request for a stay based on forum non conveniens and the application to dismiss the proceedings as an abuse of process. The substantive claims will therefore continue in Ireland; the judgment made no determination on their merits.