Injunction on receiver acting over businessmen’s assets

Two Cork businessmen succeeded in obtaining an injunction restraining a receiver from acting over their properties at an industrial estate in Churchfield yesterday, claiming they never missed a payment and there was no justification for calling in the loan.

Ms Justice Marie Baker granted an interlocutory injunction restraining the receiver appointed by Gulland Property Finance Ltd from acting as receiver over the assets of Michael and Anthony Harrington. The assets consist of commercial warehouses at Churchfield.

Ms Justice Baker said the Harringtons — through their lawyers Willis Walsh SC, Liz Scally BL and Raymond O’Neill solicitor — had made an arguable case on three grounds for the granting of the ex-parte injunction against the receiver.

Those grounds were: That the implied term of the original loan was that it would not be called in for immediate full repayment unless there was a default in repayments; that the EU directive on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts 1995 had allegedly been breached; and that registered ownership of the loan had allegedly not been changed with the land registry from the original name of Anglo Irish Bank to Gulland.

The High Court judge said in Cork yesterday that it was unusual to grant relief on an ex-parte basis in such matters, but she was doing so in this case and she adjourned the matter to the chancery list at the High Court in Dublin on April 11.

Mr Harrington said the first they knew of the appointment of the receiver was when their tenants were served with notices by the receivers. The loan now stands at just over €1.2m.

Anthony Harrington said the approach by the receiver to their tenants caused him and his brother considerable embarrassment and distress and they regarded this approach to their tenants as wholly unwarranted and unauthorised.

“Throughout the period of the loan [since October 2001] we have duly abided by its terms and have paid punctually and, at all times, the amount sought by Anglo and their successors. There was, therefore, no justification or entitlement on the part of Gulland to call in the loan,” Anthony Harrington said in the affidavit.

He said they had first repaid Anglo, then IRBC and then their special liquidators and that in all correspondence between them there was never a suggestion the Harringtons were in default in their loan and there was no demand for full immediate repayment. “Indeed the letters offered us the opportunity to purchase loans and that opportunity we took up and made an offer which either was not responded to or was rejected,” he said.

The plaintiffs are from a family who ran a Cork bakery business that ceased trading in the 1990s.