The High Court has awarded Thomas Waters the euro equivalent of £33,550, plus interest from 30 August 2000, after finding that Jarleth Kelly was personally liable to repay a loan made in 1999.
The dispute went to a plenary hearing after Kelly argued in a replying affidavit that money provided by Waters had gone to Kellcorp Limited, where Kelly was a director. Waters said he had lent the money to Kelly personally, with repayment expected after about 10 days. He told the court Kelly said it was needed to pay a supplier for mechanical garden mowers that had already been sold to customers.
Waters testified that he did not know of Kellcorp when he made the loan. Kelly’s evidence was that Waters knew the money was for the company and that a handwritten letter he sent to Waters’s solicitors in September 2000 was written on the company’s behalf.
In the letter, Kelly proposed monthly payments of £1,000 and said he could not clear the outstanding amount in one lump sum. The judge treated the letter as an apparent personal admission of liability. The court also noted that Kelly’s response to the demand did not mention Kellcorp or dispute that the demand was addressed to him personally.
The judgment cited further changes in the defence position. Correspondence from Kelly’s solicitors referred to payments to machinery suppliers without identifying Kellcorp as a contracting party. At trial, counsel also suggested that Waters could not recover because the cheque had been drawn on Thomas Waters Limited. The judge found Waters’s account credible and Kelly’s account false, concluding that the loan was made to Kelly personally.
The judge criticised Kelly’s attempt to rely on the company’s separate legal status to avoid personal liability and said Kelly had sought to defraud a personal friend. The court’s order was for judgment in the euro equivalent of £33,550, with interest running from the date of demand until payment. The judgment does not state the euro figure or specify an interest rate.