The High Court has granted Launceston Property Finance DAC summary judgment against John Walls for €1,326,819.78, the amount demanded in November 2016, with interest continuing to accrue. Mr Justice Noonan ruled on 2 November 2018 that Mr Walls had not shown a fair or reasonable probability of having a bona fide defence.
The lender’s claim arose from two loans advanced by Anglo Irish Bank Corporation in 2008, for €941,000 and €119,000. The loans were included in a portfolio sold by Irish Bank Resolution Corporation to Launceston in 2014. The parties did not dispute that the money had been advanced and remained unpaid, or the amount claimed.
Mr Walls argued that the parties had reached a binding compromise in 2016 under which he would settle the debt by paying the market value of land securing the loans. Launceston disputed that an agreement had been made. The judge said the email exchange relied on by Mr Walls was inconsistent with a concluded settlement: it included a request asking what the lender would accept, followed by an offer of €180,000. A valuation put the land’s existing value at €108,000 and its prospective value, if access were obtained, at €256,500.
The judgment also considered an earlier application by Mr Walls to restrain a sale of the property. In June 2018, Mr Justice McDonald refused an interlocutory injunction, finding that the evidence had not established even a fair question to be tried on the alleged compromise. Mr Justice Noonan said he was not bound by that decision, which concerned a different application, but considered it relevant because it examined the same affidavits. He concluded that the compromise defence in the summary judgment case rested on unsupported assertions contradicted by the documents. The possibility that phone-call recordings might support the defence was speculative, he said; a discovery motion seeking them had been withdrawn.
The judge also rejected Mr Walls’s argument that the bank had failed to investigate his ability to repay and that contributory negligence could reduce the claim. He held that the statutory defence did not apply to a claim for money due under a loan, which was not a claim for “damage” within the Civil Liability Act 1961.
Finally, he rejected a challenge to the redactions in the loan portfolio transfer deed. The unredacted portions sufficiently established that the loans had been transferred to Launceston, and the defendant had given no concrete reason for access to the omitted material. The court therefore entered judgment for the lender for the sum claimed.