The Supreme Court has allowed the proprietors of an Athlone restaurant to continue a personal claim over equipment and other property allegedly retained after their company was excluded from leased premises, while rejecting attempts to reopen the legality of the landlord's re-entry and termination of the lease.
Rayan Restaurant Limited held premises at High Street, Athlone, under a 35-year lease. Its directors and shareholders, Djamel Mennad and Fatima Zohra-Azizi, said substantial works were carried out to convert the former antique shop into a restaurant at a claimed cost of about €150,000.
A quarterly rent payment fell due on July 1, 2003. On July 24, the landlord, Barra Flynn, re-entered the premises using a key and excluded the company. The judgment records that a cheque for the outstanding rent was immediately tendered but refused.
Rayan Restaurant challenged the re-entry in the Circuit Court. In November 2004, that court dismissed the company's claim and declared that the lease had been lawfully determined. A High Court appeal was later struck out after the company failed to provide €51,000 security for costs.
New High Court proceedings were then brought. The Supreme Court held that the company and its proprietors could not use those proceedings to re-litigate the lease issue. That question was already legally settled, a principle known as res judicata, and reopening it would amount to an abuse of process.
The court reached a different conclusion on one separate issue. The statement of claim alleged that restaurant equipment and facilities belonging to the plaintiffs continued to be used after the lockout. Material before the Supreme Court included invoices said to show that much of the contents had been paid for by Mennad and Zohra-Azizi, and it was conceded that restaurant contents remained in use.
Mr Justice Finnegan held that the company itself could not pursue that property claim because it should have raised it in the earlier Circuit Court case. The two proprietors, however, had not litigated that personal claim there and could continue proceedings concerning property allegedly owned by them, including items in an apartment above the restaurant.
They were given six weeks to deliver an amended statement of claim confined to that issue.