Bank of Scotland v Beades

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judge: O’Donnell J.
• Judgment Date: 10 December 2019
• Neutral Citation: [2019] IESC 88
• Docket Number: Supreme Court Record No. 2012/425 Court of Appeal Record No. 2014/602 High Court Record No. 2012/26S
• Date: 10 December 2019
• Court: Supreme Court

[2019] IESC 88

AN CHÚIRT UACHTARACH

THE SUPREME COURT

O’Donnell J.

Dunne J.

O’Malley J.

Supreme Court Record No. 2012/425

Court of Appeal Record No. 2014/602

High Court Record No. 2012/26S

BETWEEN/

BANK OF SCOTLAND PLC

PLAINTIFF/RESPONDENT

AND

JERRY BEADES

DEFENDANT/APPELLANT

Banking & Finance – Loans – Facilities– Judgment against appellant – Appeal dismissed application for stay on judgment

Facts: The appellant had entered into loan facility agreements with the respondent and had had judgment entered against him for outstanding sums in respect of the facilities. He appealed against that judgment, which was dismissed in an earlier decision of the Supreme Court ([2019] IESC 61). The appellant had applied for a stay on that judgment, but the matter was deferred to allow the other party to make submissions.

Held by the Court, that the application for a stay would be dismissed. The appellant’s arguments in respect of staying the judgment pending an application to the European Court of Human Rights were without merit. The Court was minded however to grant a short stay to allow the appellant to take steps to deal with the substantive judgment earlier handed down.

Judgment of O’Donnell J. delivered the 10th day of December, 2019.

1 On the 20th of July, 2012, the High Court granted liberty to the plaintiff (“the Bank”) to enter final judgment against the defendant (“Mr. Beades”) in the sum of €9,684,987.04. Mr. Beades appealed against that judgment to this court. The case was initially transferred to the newly established Court of Appeal pursuant to Article 64 of the Constitution. However, in the light of the workload of the Court of Appeal in its initial years, Article 64 directions were cancelled in a number of cases to permit the appeals to proceed in the Supreme Court. This court duly heard Mr. Beades's appeal against the judgment of the High Court and, in a decision delivered on the 29th of July, 2019, dismissed the appeal.

2 The application for costs and any ancillary orders was adjourned, and listed for hearing on the 16th of October, 2019. On the day before the hearing, Mr. Beades sought to issue an application for a stay of the judgment. Such an application could not be issued since there was insufficient notice to the other party and no application was made for abridgment of time. Accordingly, the court heard argument on the 16th of October, 2019, on the question of costs and awarded the costs of the appeal to the successful respondent, but put a stay on both the judgment and the order of costs until the 24th of October, 2019, to permit the issuance of a motion seeking a stay on the judgment including the order for costs, and gave directions in relation to the delivery of any affidavits and the exchange of written submissions. The court has been furnished with succinct and helpful submissions.

3 The apparent basis upon which Mr. Beades seeks a stay on the judgment is that on the 27th of September, 2019, he lodged an application with the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”, with some authorities and submissions referring to such as the “ECHR”) at Strasbourg through a lawyer practising there. In his grounding affidavit, he argued that the plaintiff would not be prejudiced by the grant of a stay because the “plaintiff/respondent had a valuation carried out on the property and the value attributed to the property attributed to zero”. He further states that if a stay was not granted it would jeopardise his business and the employees of the company. He acknowledged that the application was not standard, “if not even ground breaking”. In the written submissions delivered, Mr. Beades appears to have adopted verbatim portions of the text of the judgment delivered by this court and argues, however, that the principles in respect of a stay of administrative proceedings enunciated in Okunade v. Minister for Justice [2012] IESC 49, [2012] 3 I.R. 152; and the principles applicable pending a reference to the European Court referred to in Data Protection Commissioner v. Facebook [2018] IEHC 236, (Unreported, High Court, Costello J., 2nd of May 2018) were applicable.

4 It must be said that it is rather difficult to follow the contentions by Mr. Beades in this regard. First, the judgment obtained was a judgment obtained against him personally, and, therefore, does not directly affect any property or company. Moreover, it is apparent that the application for a stay pending a resolution of complaint to the European Court of Human Rights raises formidable problems.

5 In the first place, the decision of the Supreme Court on any appeal is, by virtue of Article 34.5.6°, “in all cases final and conclusive”. Accordingly, the principles applicable to the grant of stay pending the determination of proceedings or pending an appeal, or pending a reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union are not and cannot be applicable. Those principles are predicated on the possibility that proceedings or the appeal, as it may be, may be resolved in favour of the applicant for a stay, and thus a court must consider the balance of convenience in circumstances where the proceedings have not been finally resolved and may yet be resolved in favour of the applicant. Plainly, this is not possible once a final decision has been made by the Supreme Court. There is no further appeal or process which can set aside or overturn the decision which is final and conclusive subject only to the exceptional jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to set aside its own judgment (Re.: Greendale Developments Ltd. [2000] 2 I.R. 514) which, in any case, is not invoked here. See, in this regard, Practice Direction SC17 of the 9th of July, 2018.

6 A related point is that an application to the European Court of Human Rights is not an appeal against the decision of the Supreme Court. It is an application to the court established by the High Contracting Parties as members of the Council of Europe under Article 19 the European Convention of Human Rights (“the Convention”) to determine claims that a Contracting Party is in breach of the Convention. Such a complaint can be made by other states or individuals, but the respondent is always a...