The High Court has ordered the official liquidator of Haydon Private Clients Limited to pay €25,000 to Peter Haydon for costs he personally paid to bring the company’s winding-up petition. The court measured the petition costs at €25,000, below the €29,000 Haydon had paid and the €41,085 total shown on two solicitors’ invoices.
The judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Finlay Geoghegan on 13 January 2015, addressed a discrete issue in the official liquidator’s final application. The company had petitioned for its own winding up in July 2009. The court appointed a provisional liquidator that month and made a winding-up order in October 2009; both orders reserved the petitioner’s costs.
Haydon, then the company’s managing director and 90% shareholder, said he agreed to pay the solicitors €29,000 for the petition work. He provided bank-account extracts recording six payments between July and October 2009, totalling that amount. He also produced two invoices addressed to him personally. The solicitors did not appear at the final application and were not seeking any unpaid petition costs.
The Steering Committee representing investors, who were the company’s main unsecured creditors, objected to the proposed payment. It argued that the amount was unreasonable and that any reimbursement due to Haydon should rank only as an unsecured debt. Haydon sought payment of the full €29,000. The official liquidator relied on the statutory power to order payment of winding-up costs and the priority given to petition costs under the court rules.
The judge found the company was entitled to its petition costs and measured them at €25,000, inclusive of outlay and VAT. She noted that the invoices totalled €41,085 and that the work description did not make clear that every item would be allowed on taxation. The judgment referred to the separate commercial proceedings and the provisional liquidator application when assessing a reasonable amount.
The court held that it could order reimbursement from company assets to a person who had paid petition costs, and that Haydon was entitled to that payment in this case. It rejected the argument that his only route was as an unsecured creditor. The order gives the €25,000 payment the normal priority for petition costs under the rules. It does not award Haydon the full €29,000 he requested, or the full invoice total.
The court declared the company entitled to its petition costs, measured them at €25,000 and directed payment of that sum from the company’s assets to Haydon.