The High Court has refused Bank of Ireland’s application for summary judgment against Brian Egan for €748,480, finding that he had made an arguable case about the calculation of the debt and should be allowed to defend the claim at a plenary hearing.
In a judgment delivered on 24 April 2023, Ms Justice Bolger said the bank had not supplied particulars of transactions on Egan’s loan accounts before a 2013 restructuring. The judge said those details could help him examine whether interest added before the restructuring had been properly calculated.
The bank relied on a letter of offer dated 5 September 2013, which provided four facilities to restructure earlier loans and an overdraft. It also gave Egan the option of selling a property used as security, in return for the bank writing off some of the debt. The property was not sold, and the judge said the terms allowed the bank to demand the full debt. Egan had made no repayments, and the bank issued a demand in July 2018.
The bank argued that Egan had accepted the 2013 agreement and that the amount claimed could be readily ascertained without interest calculations, as it was not seeking interest in the proceedings. Egan disputed the sufficiency of the information supporting the debt. He said he was concerned about how interest had been charged before 2013 and asked the bank in November 2021 for transactions on both the old accounts and new accounts opened in 2019. The judgment says he received no reply to that request.
Justice Bolger distinguished an earlier case, Flanagan, in which a bank had agreed to give up its right to enforce previous loan agreements. She said the 2013 letter in this case preserved the relevance of the earlier loans, and the bank had not expressly surrendered that right. She also said the issue was not whether the 2013 agreement was valid, but whether the debt had been sufficiently particularised for summary judgment.
The judge found that Egan had shown how disclosure of the account history might assist his defence. She stressed that she was not deciding whether he was entitled to the information he had requested; that could be considered later in a discovery application. The ruling does not decide the underlying debt claim.
Justice Bolger’s indicative view was that the costs of the summary judgment motion should be costs in the cause, leaving their ultimate treatment to the trial judge. She listed the matter for a further mention on 11 May 2023 to hear submissions on costs.