The High Court varied a €1,302,822.99 default judgment obtained by Bank of Ireland Mortgage Bank against Miriam Muldoon, removing the amount and interest claimed under a 14 March 2007 loan offer. It sent the dispute over the signature on that offer to a plenary hearing, limited to whether the signature was valid.
Mr Justice Meenan gave the ruling on 18 December 2019. He rejected Ms Muldoon’s application to set aside the judgment in full, finding she had not shown a reasonable prospect of defending the claims arising from the other three loan offers. The judgment had been entered in default of appearance on 22 May 2017.
The four loan offers, made to Ms Muldoon and her then husband, were dated December 2005, June 2006, August 2006 and March 2007. The judgment says the couple drew down the loans and later defaulted on repayments. The bank demanded repayment, and a summary summons followed in September 2016.
Ms Muldoon said she did not recall signing the offers, was not asked to sign them at the bank and had not been advised to obtain independent legal advice. The judge said there was no legal requirement for her to sign at the bank. The offers recommended independent legal advice, but he found no general obligation on the bank to ensure she obtained it. He also found the case did not involve an allegation of undue influence.
The judge noted that Ms Muldoon had not contested her signature on three offers. For the March 2007 offer, she relied on an affidavit from forensic document examiner Michael Moore. He said his comparison of signatures strongly supported the view that the signature on that document was not hers. The judge found she had made a strong case that it was forged, sufficient to defend the claim tied to that offer. He did not make a final finding that the signature was forged.
The judge also questioned whether the default judgment had come as a surprise or resulted from mistake. Ms Muldoon’s former solicitor had failed to enter an appearance after she passed on the summons. But she had signed a letter in October 2017 consenting to correction of the judgment date, despite later affidavits saying she knew nothing of that correspondence. The judge said there was no explanation for the discrepancy and that she knew of the judgment by October 2017. Her motion to set it aside was issued in October 2018.
Separately, the Circuit Court had made a consent order in November 2017 for the bank to recover possession of lands securing the loans, including the family home, with a nine-month stay. The High Court set aside a Master’s order extending the time to appeal that possession order. It held that the remaining debt meant the bank was entitled to enforce its security and there was no legal basis to extend the appeal time.