The High Court has rejected claims by Katherine Wachman, John Paul Magnier and John Magnier arising from alleged agreements to buy Barne Estate, a roughly 751-acre property in County Tipperary. Mr Justice Max Barrett found that neither a land-sale agreement nor an option to buy the company owning the estate had been concluded at a meeting on 22 August 2023. He refused all relief sought by the plaintiffs. The court will hear the parties on costs.
The plaintiffs said the agreements were finalised at a meeting at Coolmore House, the home of John Magnier. They sought specific performance, declarations that the agreements were binding, and other relief. The defendants disputed that any binding agreement had been made. The judge found that no one present on the defendants’ side had authority to commit Barne Estate Limited to a sale, and that material terms remained unresolved.
The judgment said the parties’ conduct after the meeting supported the finding that negotiations were continuing. On 23 August, the offer was accepted subject to contract. A written exclusivity agreement followed on 31 August, describing discussions about a potential acquisition and the aim of concluding a sale. The court said that agreement did not oblige the parties to complete a sale and found no breach of its terms.
The judge also rejected the claim that an option to buy the shares in Barne Estate Limited had been agreed. He found no credible evidence of agreement on essential terms, including price and duration. He said the option claim was absent from contemporaneous records until late September and was not known to the parties’ solicitors before then.
The plaintiffs relied on steps including ploughing fields and paying a booking deposit as evidence of performance. The court found those actions were also consistent with negotiations before a binding contract. Because it found no oral agreement had been concluded, it held that the statutory writing requirement for enforcing a land-sale contract was not engaged. It also rejected the plaintiffs’ arguments based on authority, ratification and estoppel.
The judgment said the plaintiffs’ account of the meeting changed after phone records showed no calls had been made to the trustees that evening, despite earlier claims that trustee approval had been confirmed. The judge found those changes materially weakened the reliability of their account and preferred the contemporaneous documents where accounts conflicted.
The defendants’ counterclaim for slander of title was dismissed. The judge said it had not been developed in submissions and was unsupported by evidence.