The High Court has refused AIB Mortgage Bank’s request to revisit a 2017 judgment granting it summary judgment of €244,591.69 against Nadine Thompson. The bank sought to add a legal argument about transfers under the Asset Covered Securities Act 2001 (ACS Act), but the court said that issue could have been argued at the original hearing and was not decided in the earlier judgment.
In the principal judgment, delivered on 31 July 2017, Ms Justice Baker found that express written notice of the debt assignment had not been served as required by section 28(6) of the Superior Court of Judicature (Ireland) Act 1887. She nevertheless concluded that the debt had been assigned in equity and entered judgment for the bank.
Before the final order was perfected, the bank asked the judge to revisit or amplify her reasoning. It argued that section 58 of the ACS Act provided a separate statutory route for transferring the loan, without requiring individual written notice. The bank said clarification would reduce uncertainty in other cases involving loans transferred under the Act. It told the court that €7.8 billion in bank loans had been transferred to it under the legislation.
Justice Baker found that the section 58 argument could be material, but the bank had not advanced it at the original hearing, despite the transfer documents and the Act being before the court. The earlier argument about the Act had addressed whether the original lender could be joined to the proceedings, rather than whether the Act answered the defence based on lack of notice.
The judge said the principal judgment did not decide whether a transfer under section 58 required notice under section 28(6), and was not authority on that question. She was not persuaded that the bank could not, with reasonable diligence, have raised its new argument at trial. Allowing it to do so now would, in substance, reopen matters already heard and determined.
Justice Baker refused the application. She said the bank or another credit institution could fully argue the section 58 issue in a suitable future case. The refusal left the original summary judgment in place; the court did not determine the legal effect of section 58 on the notice requirement.