Accountant was validly appointed as liquidator to transport firm, says judge

An accountant nominated to act as liquidator to a Co Tipperary transport company by its creditors was validly appointed, the High Court has ruled.

Mr Justice Sean Ryan yesterday held that John O’Connell had been validly appointed as liquidator to Managh International Transport, Farranamanagh, Cashel, Co Tipperary.

The company went into voluntary liquidation earlier this year.

A director of the company, Stephen O’Keeffe, who is the son of the firm’s sole member and managing director Seamus O’Keeffe, had sought declarations from the court that Mr O’Connell’s appointment be invalidated and that accountant Peter Russell, who was chosen by the company, act as liquidator.

However Mr Justice Ryan dismissed all grounds of Mr O’Keeffe’s application, and held that Mr O’Connell, not Mr Russell, had been appointed as liquidator.

Mr Russell, of Russell & Co Trinity House, George’s Quay, Cork, was nominated to act as liquidator by the members of the company on Aug 2. The following day, at a meeting of the company’s creditors at a Co Cork hotel, a majority of creditors voted in favour of Mr O’Connell being appointed as liquidator.

The validity of that vote was disputed. Lawyers for Mr O’Keeffe argued that Mr O’Connell should be disqualified on grounds including that he was not properly appointed at the creditors’ meeting and by reason of actual and perceived bias.

Mr O’Connell, of Bank Place, Mallow, Co Cork, rejected the claims, and said he was validly appointed as liquidator. Earlier this year, he obtained a temporary injunction preventing Mr Russell from acting as liquidator of the company.

That injunction was lifted after both Mr Russell and Mr O’Connell gave an undertaking not to act as liquidator of the company until all matters have been determined by the courts.

Yesterday, in his judgment, Mr Justice Ryan said that Mr O’Keeffe’s application had “fail[ed] on all grounds”.

The judge said it was not clear why Mr O’Keeffe had brought the application, which the judge said “appeared to be an attempt by Mr Russell to achieve by litigation what he could not achieve by the votes at the creditors’ meeting”.

Mr Justice Ryan added that it also appeared to be an attempt by Mr O’Keeffe “to preserve in position a sympathetic person whom he has previously employed to do work for the company”.

The device of using a co-director to seek to overturn the creditor’s choice, the judge added, was “wholly unmeritorious.”