The Supreme Court has dismissed two appeals by Treasa Ní Ghruagáin against orders allowing Appleridge Developments Limited to enforce costs judgments against lands registered in her name in County Dublin. The Court said the challenge to the amounts certified as due had to be brought through judicial review, and could not be decided in the well-charging proceedings before it.
The appeals concerned High Court orders made on 12 April 2010. Those orders declared two judgments well charged on the lands and provided for sale in default of payment. They arose from costs awarded to Appleridge in judicial review proceedings brought by Ní Ghruagáin against An Bord Pleanála over a proposed development.
The costs orders were made in 2002 and 2003. Certificates of taxation issued in December 2004 for €66,479.11 and €31,136.06, and judgment mortgages were later registered against two folios in County Dublin. Appleridge sought enforcement through a special summons issued in November 2008.
Ní Ghruagáin argued that the taxation had proceeded in her absence after she was told it would not go ahead because Appleridge had been struck off the Companies Register. Appleridge’s evidence was that its costs accountant had adjourned the 9 November 2004 hearing and proceeded the following day. The Supreme Court said the evidence before it supported, at minimum, a strong argument that the taxation may have breached her right to fair procedures. It did not decide that challenge in these appeals.
The Court held that the High Court’s role in the well-charging proceedings was limited. To challenge the certified amounts, Ní Ghruagáin needed to seek judicial review to quash the certificates of taxation. She had not sought leave to do so before the High Court hearing in April 2010, despite knowing by 2009 that the certificates had issued. The Court also held that Appleridge’s restoration to the register in December 2004 retrospectively validated acts taken in its name while it was dissolved.
The Court rejected her reliance on the EU rule that certain environmental proceedings must not be prohibitively expensive. It held that the rule did not apply to the 2004 taxation because the deadline for Ireland to implement it had not yet passed, and did not apply to the later enforcement proceedings, which were not environmental proceedings.
The Supreme Court therefore dismissed both appeals. It said no other order could now be made in the appeals, while expressing sympathy for Ní Ghruagáin’s position.