The High Court has ordered Clydaville Investments Limited and Setanta Centre Unlimited Company to exchange specified documents in their dispute over a Dublin shop and a proposed redevelopment of the Setanta Centre. The ruling concerned discovery only; it did not decide whether Clydaville has the tenant rights it claims or whether Setanta is entitled to damages.
Clydaville, the tenant of the Kilkenny Design Centre on Nassau Street, says it has exercised rights over matters including rooftop air-conditioning equipment and the use of nearby common areas for waste equipment. It argues that estate rules issued by Setanta in April 2019 restrict those rights. Setanta denies that the claimed rights exist or were exercised and says Clydaville’s actions have delayed redevelopment. Its counterclaim seeks damages which the judgment describes as being in the region of €16 million per year for lost rent and other costs.
Clydaville sought documents about Setanta’s knowledge of, and any permission for, the claimed rights from 1 January 1997 onwards. The parties offered sharply different estimates of the cost of that discovery: Clydaville’s e-discovery expert estimated about €400,000, while Setanta relied on its solicitors’ estimate of up to €8.3 million. The judge said the estimates could not simply be resolved in either party’s favour without cross-examination. As the documents were relevant and necessary to Clydaville’s claims, the court ordered discovery in the terms sought.
The court also ordered documents created between 22 August 2017 and 3 October 2019 about the reasons for or purposes of the estate rules, but limited the category to documents by, on behalf of, or received by Setanta or Ternary Limited. It declined to extend that request to third-party servants or agents, relying on sworn evidence that relevant documents would be held by or received by the companies.
For Setanta’s counterclaim, the court ordered documents about causes of actual or projected redevelopment delays from 1 January 2017 onwards. It limited documents about projected rental income and staff costs to those created since 1 January 2018. For construction-cost evidence, it restricted discovery to a named construction consultants’ report dated 8 October 2019 and copies of demolition and construction contracts, with redactions where necessary. It refused discovery about actual or projected changes in the centre’s value, describing that future-loss claim as speculative. For professional fees tied to alleged unauthorised actions, the order covered invoices or discharge of fees from 1 January 2017 onwards, rather than all correspondence with professionals.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Twomey on 4 June 2020, records no determination of the underlying tenant-rights dispute or the counterclaim.