The High Court has refused Adrian and Patricia Flynn’s application to quash a Louth Circuit Court judgment in favour of Dundalk Credit Union Ltd., leaving in place an order for €38,092.14, together with costs. The court also refused their requests to remove the judgment mortgage on their family home and to stay enforcement of the order.
The judicial review concerned an order made by Judge Reynolds on 5 May 2016 after a plenary hearing. The applicants had leave to challenge that order, but leave to challenge earlier orders made in July 2014 and January 2015 had been refused. Those earlier orders were not appealed, and the High Court held that they could not be attacked collaterally in this application.
The applicants argued that Judge Reynolds had acted unfairly, including by restricting their evidence, refusing to let the first applicant read a prepared statement or bring several boxes of documents into the witness box, and prompting a credit union witness during cross-examination. They also complained that the credit union had not complied with discovery and that the judge refused an amended defence and counterclaim presented on the hearing day.
The High Court found that the trial judge’s decisions on discovery, the late amended pleadings and the witnesses were consistent with case management and fairness to both sides. It said asking for a brief explanation of each witness’s proposed evidence was not inherently unfair. It also found that refusing the prepared statement and boxes of documents was proportionate in the circumstances.
The first applicant had asked the High Court to listen to the full digital audio recording of the 2016 hearing to identify further examples of alleged bias. The judge refused, noting that the applicants had been given an opportunity to file further affidavit evidence after obtaining the recording but had not done so. The court found that the single specific example of the judge prompting the witness did not establish a reasonable apprehension that the hearing had not been fair and independent.
The court also rejected the applicants’ application to strike out the credit union’s statement of opposition and affidavit. It concluded that the applicants had not shown grounds to quash the 5 May 2016 order. The judgment addressed that entitlement only; it said it did not need to consider whether relief should separately be refused because of the applicants’ conduct.