The High Court granted Chadwicks Limited judgment for €58,645.98 against P. Byrne Roofing Limited and remitted the remaining €30,681.85 of its claim for a plenary hearing. The company may defend that part of the claim and pursue a counterclaim. The court refused a stay on execution of the judgment.
The decision concerned two summary judgment proceedings: Chadwicks’ claim against the roofing company for goods supplied, and a related claim against Patrick Byrne under a guarantee of the company’s indebtedness. Mr Justice Clarke delivered judgment on 25 February 2005.
Chadwicks had reduced its initial claim of €111,984.25 after compromising a dispute over a credit for goods supplied by Tegral. The remaining issues included alleged overcharging and goods said not to have been received. The court said the Tegral issue no longer had relevance to the dispute before it.
The company disputed invoices totalling €30,681.85, all relating to deliveries in or after November 2002. It did not dispute that the goods had been ordered or brought to the sites specified in the orders. Its defence was that delivery to sites shared with other contractors did not necessarily mean the goods had been delivered into its custody. Some delivery dockets were unsigned or, it argued, signed by people without authority to acknowledge receipt for the company.
The judge held that this raised an arguable dispute about the supplier’s contractual delivery obligations and whether they had been met. Resolving it could require evidence about the parties’ business practices, conditions at the sites and the quantities used on the building projects. He found a fair or reasonable probability of a real defence to that portion of the claim, without deciding whether the defence would ultimately succeed.
The remaining €58,645.98 included invoices the company had not challenged when issued and had paid through a rolling account. The judge found no real evidence casting doubt on the rates charged. He also rejected as not credible, for the purposes of summary judgment, the suggestion that substantial non-deliveries before November 2002 could be established from the later dispute. The company could still pursue those matters as a counterclaim, but the judge declined to stay execution of the judgment.
Mr Byrne’s liability under the guarantee could not exceed the company’s liability. Although an affidavit had asserted that the guarantee was invalid, that point was not pursued at the hearing. The judgment’s operative order granted judgment for €58,645.98 and sent the balance to a plenary hearing, with permission for the defendant to bring any further counterclaim issues.