The High Court adjudicated Angela Farrell bankrupt after finding that she had not shown her financial position could be dealt with through a debt settlement arrangement or personal insolvency arrangement.
In a judgment delivered on 13 May 2014, Mr Justice Brian J. McGovern said FCR Media Ltd., formerly Truvo Ireland Ltd., was entitled to petition for bankruptcy over an unpaid judgment debt. The court found the sum due was €37,407.39 after Farrell made a payment of €1,650 against a 2010 judgment for €39,057.39.
The judge had initially adjudicated Farrell bankrupt on 9 December 2013, when she was absent as the petition was called. He later learned that amendments requiring the court to consider whether insolvency arrangements might better address a debtor’s circumstances had commenced six days earlier. He set aside that adjudication and adjourned the petition so Farrell could provide an affidavit with a statement of affairs and a letter from a registered personal insolvency practitioner.
Farrell did not provide those documents before the petition was heard again on 11 April 2014. In an affidavit, she said papers relating to the matter had been taken into the Law Society’s possession under a High Court order. The judge said there was nothing before him to show that she had tried to contact the Law Society or a practitioner.
The court refused the relief sought in Farrell’s notice of motion. She had argued, among other things, that the matter was res judicata, that her rights and fair procedures had been infringed, that the court’s jurisdiction was exhausted, and that the earlier adjudication should have been annulled. The judge said the earlier adjudication had been set aside to allow the amended statutory requirements to be considered, so the petition was not being re-litigated. He also refused her request for recordings of earlier hearings.
Farrell alleged that an affidavit supporting the bankruptcy summons was fraudulent because it stated that no execution had issued on the debt. The petitioner’s evidence was that a Fieri Facias order had not been sent to the sheriff and no steps had been taken to execute against Farrell’s property. The judge found nothing misleading or fraudulent in the affidavit.
The judge also rejected Farrell’s argument that a charge in favour of J.P. Morgan (Europe) Ltd. prevented FCR Media from pursuing the debt. He said the charge had been satisfied in full before the bankruptcy proceedings began and that FCR Media was entitled to obtain the summons and petition for adjudication.
Finding the statutory requirements for adjudication met, and that the debt remained unpaid, the court ordered Farrell’s bankruptcy. The judgment records the fresh adjudication following the earlier order being set aside; it does not describe the 2013 adjudication as annulled.