Interim injunction granted to dairy farmer over €3.4m debt

A High Court judge has granted a dairy farmer an interim injunction over a receiver which was appointed over lands she owned in Gortderrybeg, Roscrea, Co Tipperary.

The land is used for dairying and is owned by Ms Anne Cody. She has it leased to Ballymore Farms Limited, which is a company she controls.

Upon the granting of the injunction, the receiver Kenmare Finance Property was prevented from taking possession of the lands owned by Ms Cody.

In her judgment, which was published last week, Justice Tara Burns said that she was “unimpressed by the cavalier attitude of the defendant to the fact that a sum of in excess of €3m was demanded of the plantiff when she in fact at most, on their own reckoning, was only required to pay somewhere in the region of €600,000”.

Credit facility

Court documents show that in 2005 the plaintiff, Ms Cody, guaranteed a credit facility which had been provided by Anglo Irish Bank plc to her husband and his business partner, limited to a first legal charge to the bank over the property the subject of these proceedings.

“The guarantee to be provided by the plaintiff was mis-described in the credit facility executed by her husband and his business partner. However, this was noticed and immediately attended to by the plaintiff’s solicitor who confirmed with the bank’s representative that the personal guarantee of the plaintiff was limited to the value of the lands at Gortderrybeg and was supported by a first legal charge over the said lands,” the documents say.

Later, the plaintiff’s husband and his business partner defaulted on the credit facility. Summary summons proceedings were then instituted against the plaintiff and her husband by Kenmare Finance Company, which acquired the debt.

Summary proceedings were issued against Ms Cody in 2017, with the company claiming a sum of €3.48m on foot of the guarantee that was executed by her. The defendant argued that it didn’t matter that the letter of demand was incorrect and that there was a sum of up to €600,000 anyway.

Market value

However, while there is no agreement between the parties as to the current market value of the land, the value being assigned by the defendant to the land is approximately €600,000.

In contrast, the plaintiff’s valuation of the land is in the region of €200,000.

This led Ms Cody to seek the injunction, restraining the defendant, namely the receiver, from entering upon and taking possession of the lands the subject matter of the proceedings and restraining the defendant from exercising any powers which may have been conferred on him by virtue of the deed of mortgage already referred to.

The injunction will apply until a full hearing of the matter.

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