The High Court has restrained John Philip Quearney from interfering with two joint receivers’ work at six mortgaged properties, including by obstructing their collection of rents. The injunctions are interlocutory: they apply pending the determination of the substantive proceedings or further order.
The receivers, Declan Taite and Sharon Barrett, were appointed by AIB Mortgage Bank and Allied Irish Banks plc on 10 July 2013. The properties are at North King Street, Mount Symon Green and Erris Square, Dublin. The court heard that the properties were jointly owned and mortgaged to the banks in 2006 or 2007.
In an application for injunctions, the receivers alleged that Quearney and another joint owner had told tenants to ignore letters notifying them of the appointments and to keep paying rent to the owners. Evidence before the court included reports that the men had demanded rent from a tenant at Erris Square and threatened eviction, and that Quearney had told a tenant at Mount Symon Green he might change the locks if rent was held in escrow.
Justice Laffoy found that the evidence supporting the receivers’ account had not been controverted. She was satisfied, for the purpose of the interlocutory application, that the banks were entitled to enforce their security by appointing the receivers and that there was a fair issue to be tried about the receivers’ entitlement to receive rents while the main case was pending.
The judge said the defendant could challenge the banks’ title and the appointments in the substantive action. She did not determine the merits of his separate claim against Allied Irish Banks plc, which alleged negligence and misrepresentation, or decide whether that claim could provide a defence to enforcement of the mortgages. She said that issue was for another day.
The court granted the injunctions in the terms sought, noting the receivers’ undertaking to pay damages if the injunctions were granted but they later lost the substantive action. The order does not determine the final outcome of that action.
Quearney had also filed a cross-application referring to his separate proceedings against Allied Irish Banks plc and questioning the validity of agreements and bank-account contracts. The judge found the motion misconceived and ordered it struck out; it claimed no specific relief.