Quinn family lose appeal over disclosure of documents

Businessman Seán Quinn and members of his family have lost an appeal concerning disclosure of thousands of documents for a case brought against them by Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) over an alleged assets stripping conspiracy.

A three-judge Court of Appeal on Wednesday upheld High Court orders requiring the Quinns to disclose and provide inspection of documents to lawyers representing receivers appointed over assets of the Quinns.

The case is separate to that being brought by members of the family against IBRC denying liability for €2.34 billion loans made by the former Anglo Irish Bank to Quinn companies. That action is due to be heard in June.

The Court of Appeal, in dismissing the Quinn appeal over the documents, was told a date has yet to be set for the hearing of the alleged conspiracy case.

IBRC previously appointed Declan Taite and Sharon Barrett as receivers over the assets of Mr Quinn and members of his family and over various companies in the Quinn international property group (IPG). The receivers allege the Quinns and the companies conspired to strip assets from the IPG and put them beyond reach.

The Quinns deny the claims.

The dispute over disclosure of documents centred on whether the Quinns could assert legal privilege over certain documents and whether they were relevant documents.

The receivers argued they were entitled to know the basis on which they claimed privilege and claimed the Quinns had wrongly classified 75 of 126,000 documents as being non-relevant when they were relevant.

The High Court later revised how the inspection of documents for relevancy should take place.

The High Court’s Mr Justice Brian McGovern had found there had been “no meaningful attempt” by the defendants to engage in the process of discovery and inspection of documents in advance of the conspiracy hearing. The judge said the Quinns were trying to slow down the disclosure process using the legal equivalent of a “work to rule”.

Upholding that decision on Wednesday, Mr Justice Alan Mahon, giving the decision of the three-judge Court of Appeal, said those remarks were “a damning indictment” of the attitude adopted by the personal Quinn defendants to the inspection process.

The receivers may have been unrealistic in their assessment of the manpower required to review the “great number” of documents in this case at the time they agreed the inspection process, he said.

It could never be the situation that a discovery process ordered by a court for the purpose of good case management could never be altered or varied by subsequent court order merely because the original process had been agreed between the parties, he said.

The Court of Appeal said its order on this case would not be ready for six days during which time the Quinns could decide whether they would seek to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court on a point of exceptional public importance.