The Court of Appeal has dismissed Cormac Lohan’s appeals against summary judgments requiring him to pay Allied Irish Banks plc €1,681,861.89 and AIB Mortgage Bank €79,059.49, plus the costs of the proceedings below.
The judgments were entered by the High Court in February 2019 in claims concerning loan facilities. In its judgment delivered on 11 October 2023, the Court of Appeal held that Lohan had no arguable defence based on the restructuring offer he relied on: he did not return the offer letters signed within the stated period, or within further time allowed by the banks. The banks withdrew the offer before he returned the signed letters.
Lohan had argued that the parties had reached an earlier agreement to restructure his debts. The Court of Appeal said the offer letters made signing and returning them by a specified date a condition, and concluded that no binding restructuring agreement had been made. It said this resolved the grounds of appeal, which challenged the High Court’s treatment of the alleged agreement and the summary judgment test.
The appeal also raised objections about the banks’ standing after the loans were transferred to Everyday Finance DAC, and whether Everyday could participate without filing its own respondent’s notices. The court rejected those objections. It said an order made with Lohan’s consent in April 2022 provided for Everyday and the banks to continue as co-respondents. The court did not decide whether the transfer deed itself transferred the benefit of the judgments to Everyday; it said that question was unnecessary to resolve in these appeals.
Lohan also sought to challenge the particulars supporting the debt claims, relying on a Supreme Court decision delivered after the High Court judgment. The Court of Appeal refused to admit that new ground, which had not been argued in the High Court or included in the appeal grounds. It considered that the banks could likely have sought to amend their pleadings had the issue been raised earlier, and that Lohan had not shown why justice required the late argument to be heard.
The court also rejected a submission that the banks had caused inordinate and inexcusable delay, noting that no formal application to dismiss the proceedings had been made and that the alleged periods of delay had not been meaningfully identified.
The court’s provisional order was that Lohan pay the respondents’ appeal costs. He was given 14 days from delivery of the judgment to request a short hearing to argue for a different costs order.