The High Court has refused Thomas Cronin’s application to dismiss Carrick-on-Shannon District Credit Union’s summary judgment proceedings against him for want of prosecution and delay. Mr Justice Fullam ruled that the Credit Union had not caused inordinate delay, so the application failed.
The proceedings were issued in October 2010 and sought €250,233 under a loan agreement made in December 2008. The judgment records the outstanding balance as €65,308.01. Cronin’s November 2016 motion argued that more than five years had passed without a step in the case and that he had been given no adequate explanation. He also claimed prejudice because people involved in arranging or restructuring the loans had died, and said he had not received the loan funds.
The Credit Union submitted that the proceedings had been adjourned generally in February 2012 under a settlement negotiated by solicitors acting for the defendants. The agreement provided for payments by Paul Maye, Cronin’s brother-in-law, and allowed the Credit Union to re-enter the proceedings if the payments were not made. The court noted that a letter sent to Cronin in February 2012 said the Credit Union would not progress the proceedings so long as Maye complied.
A further settlement was made with Maye in November 2015, but he failed to meet its requirements. The judgment records that payments continued to be credited to Cronin’s account until May 2016 and that he was informed in June 2016 that the proceedings had been re-entered.
Applying the principles in *Primor v Stokes Kennedy Crowley*, the judge said a dismissal application required the defendant to establish inordinate and inexcusable delay before the court considered where the balance of justice lay. He accepted that the five-year gap identified by Cronin might be literally correct, but said it ignored the adjournment under the settlement and the later re-entry after Maye failed to comply. The judge said Cronin’s claim that he was shocked to learn of the re-entry was not credible.
The court found no inordinate delay and refused the application. It added that Cronin had suffered no prejudice from the death of a loan organiser, because she died before the loan agreement was executed. The ruling determined the dismissal motion; it did not decide the underlying summary judgment claim.