Court reserves ruling on Quinn’s ‘innocently unaware’ defence

The family of businessman Sean Quinn want to amend their case against State-owned IBRC over liability for €2.34 billion loans to allege they were innocently unaware about the allegedly unlawful purpose of loan security instruments.

They want to be able to advance claims, when signing share pledges and guarantees as security for the €2.34bn loans from Anglo Irish Bank to Quinn companies, they were innocently unaware that security was allegedly for the unlawful purpose of propping up the bank's share price.

They claim they should be entitled to advance a specific claim of innocent unawareness at the hearing of their action aimed at avoiding liability for the €2.34 billion loans.

The trial of that action, initiated in 2011, has been deferred four times at the application of the Director of Public Prosecutions on grounds it might prejudice separate criminal proceedings against former Anglo executives and officials.

A new trial date has yet to be fixed but the appeal court heard yesterday that might be 2017 at the earliest.

Having heard the family’s appeal against a High Court judge’s refusal to permit them make claims of innocent unawareness of the purpose of the share pledges and guarantees, the three judge Court of Appeal said it would give judgment on a later date.

Mr Justice Sean Ryan, presiding and sitting with Mr Justice Michael Peart and Ms Justice Mary Irvine, said the court was also reserving judgment on IBRC’s appeal against the High Court’s decision to allow the family pursue their claim the €2.34 billion loans themselves were unlawfully made.

The High Court had also ruled the Quinns cannot pursue claims that the same loans, if found to be illegally made, are not enforceable.

The action by Patricia Quinn and her five children is aimed at avoiding liability for the loans of €2.34 billion made by the former Anglo Irish Bank to Quinn companies.

In submissions on behalf of the family, Bernard Dunleavy SC said their action has “no real prospect” of getting on for at least another year and a half. It was difficult how IBRC could contend it will suffer any meaningful prejudice as a result of the amendments his side sought to make, he said.

The Quinns say they were effectively directed by others to sign the disputed share pledges and guarantees, he said. Their case was they would not have done so had they known those were intended, it is alleged, to provide security for loans advanced for the unlawful purpose of propping up Anglo’s share price.

Mr Dunleavy said this appeal arose from the previous Supreme Court decision concerning what claims could be advance at the full hearing of the case. His side were not seeking to change the facts or go behind the Supreme Court decision but rather to correctly plead their claim the securities should not be enforceable because his clients were “innocents in an arrangement put together for an illegal purpose”.

Opposing the appeal, Paul Gallagher SC said the family had not pleaded the case they were now seeking to make and could not be permitted make that case now.

This was an attempt, following the Supreme Court judgment, to go behind that judgment, he argued. It was possible a “calculated decision” was previously made that the claim now sought to be pleaded was one that ought not to be run, he added.