The High Court has allowed Patrick Moffitt an opportunity to pursue a limited legal challenge to a 1987 order for the sale of land, while ruling that his current claim cannot continue as pleaded.
In a judgment delivered on 27 July 2007, Mr Justice Clarke considered Agricultural Credit Corporation plc’s application to dismiss Moffitt’s proceedings as bound to fail. The application was taken before the corporation had to file a defence. Moffitt had also sought judgment in default of defence, but that application was not the one being considered at this stage.
The dispute traces back to a 1986 Circuit Court judgment for IR£13,741.60 plus costs in favour of the corporation. In 1987, the Circuit Court made a well charging order for IR£29,861.06, continuing interest and costs, and ordered the sale of lands identified by four County Roscommon folios. It also directed the County Registrar to investigate debts and priorities affecting the lands.
Moffitt’s current claim sought to have the sale order declared statute-barred and void, and to restrain action under it. Clarke held that this claim repeated the substance of earlier proceedings, which had been struck out in 2000 after the court found they disclosed no reasonable cause of action. The appeal against that decision was not reinstated. The judge concluded that the repeated claim was barred by res judicata.
At the hearing, Moffitt’s counsel raised two additional legal questions that were not in the current pleadings: whether a well charging order continues to affect land after it moves from one folio to another, and whether changes to several folios could make the order unenforceable as a whole. Clarke considered these distinct from the claims already barred. Moffitt had represented himself in the earlier proceedings, and the judge said the issues were narrow legal questions that could be dealt with without significant burden to the corporation.
The judge did not decide whether either argument was correct. He said the proceedings as they stood could not continue and that challenges to the original Circuit Court orders could not be reopened. He proposed giving Moffitt’s legal advisers an opportunity to file an amended claim confined to the two folio questions, with relevant facts agreed between the parties. If that happened, he proposed that the legal questions be tried as a preliminary issue.
The judgment also addressed a proposed argument about limitation and interest on the debt. Clarke said the County Registrar had jurisdiction to determine the interest properly due and that there was no basis to intervene before the registrar had made a determination adverse to Moffitt.
The court’s proposed course was to refuse the corporation’s dismissal motion if an appropriate amended claim was produced within a timetable to be discussed with counsel, with costs reserved to the judge hearing the preliminary issue. The judgment did not itself determine the land-order questions or make a final order on that proposed course.