The High Court has quashed the Master of the High Court’s decision to strike out a special summons brought by Allied Irish Banks plc and AIB Mortgage Bank against former solicitor Angela Farrell over undertakings connected with property loans. It also declared that the Master had no power to take possession of the court file to send it to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
The judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley on 17 April 2015, concerned the Master’s handling of the banks’ proceedings, not whether Ms Farrell had breached the undertakings. The banks had sought orders requiring her to fulfil undertakings given as their clients’ solicitor, or alternatively compensation for any loss. The loans, totalling more than €3 million, had been made to members of one family, whose borrowers were not parties to the judicial review.
The Master questioned the banks’ affidavits, including errors about which bank held particular undertakings and claims that the banks’ security remained outstanding. On 14 May 2014, he said he would refer the papers to the DPP because he suspected perjury. The banks sought to challenge that decision but could not obtain an order recording it for appeal. After the judicial review began, the Master asked the banks to withdraw their summons and then struck it out on 23 July 2014.
Justice O’Malley found that the Master was acting in his official capacity when handling the court file, not as a private citizen. She said his role under the rules was not to decide the merits of affidavits in a case he lacked jurisdiction to hear. The court found that the suspected errors did not support an “incontestable prima facie case of perjury”: including undertakings made to the other bank showed no apparent deliberate falsehood, while the statement that security was outstanding was an assertion of law. The Master acted irrationally in reaching his own conclusion on that issue.
The court also held that the Master had no power to strike out the special summons. While Justice O’Malley did not find that the case fell within the legal category of premature judgment, she concluded that the events on 23 July could cause a reasonable onlooker to apprehend objective bias: withdrawing the summons could have made the judicial review moot, and the Master struck it out after the banks refused to withdraw.
The court declared that the Master had no power to copy or otherwise take possession of the file for the purpose of sending it to the DPP, and quashed the strike-out order. It did not decide whether the banks were entitled to enforce the undertakings or receive compensation. The judgment said no further order was likely to be required.