The High Court has ordered RSA Insurance Ireland Limited to provide further discovery of documents concerning what it knew about the location of the Billanes’ insured property, previous flooding there and any earlier flood-damage claim.
Mr Justice Max Barrett made the order on 11 July 2019 in John and Deirdre Billane’s appeal against the Financial Services Ombudsman, with RSA as notice party. The application sought further and better discovery after an earlier order of 8 October 2018.
The Billanes’ position, as described by the court, was that they would argue that certain statements or conclusions by the Ombudsman about RSA’s factual knowledge were wrong. They considered that the Ombudsman had been told, or left with the impression, that relevant facts were different from what they were. The court said this meant the judicial review proceedings involved a dispute about underlying facts, including what the insurer knew or ought to have known and the basis for the Ombudsman’s conclusions.
The judge said discovery appeared appropriate in the circumstances, despite the exceptional standard generally associated with discovery in judicial review proceedings. The documents before the court showed that an online process sourced flood-related information from a database after an address was entered. The court also said RSA was the source of that factual information and that all information RSA possessed had not yet been provided.
The application also concerned RSA’s underwriting guidelines or manuals said to have been relevant to the policy or claim. An affidavit from the IT Project Manager of 123.ie, an intermediary distributing insurance products underwritten by RSA, described the online sales process as stand-alone. On that evidence, no guidelines or manuals applied to the policy at issue. The system issued or declined a standard policy automatically based on information entered online; underwriting policies may have informed the system’s initial design but did not operate within it.
The court ordered further and better discovery of item (ii), concerning RSA’s knowledge and related records. It did not order discovery of underwriting guidelines or manuals, having been told none applied. The judgment concerned this discovery application; it did not decide the underlying appeal or the dispute about non-disclosure.