Superwood ruling upheld

The Supreme Court has upheld a decision that the Superwood companies must provide some €1.6 million security for costs before they may appeal a High Court decision arising from a fire which destroyed the companies' premises in Co Wicklow.

An attempt by the Superwood companies to reduce their grounds of appeal so as to cut the huge costs involved in their attempt to overturn the High Court judgment of Mr Justice Thomas Smyth was rejected by the Supreme Court yesterday.

Many of the grounds of appeal relate to criticism of the trial judge's treatment of the case and his judgment.

In April 2002, the Supreme Court ordered that Superwood Ltd and related companies must provide security for costs before they may proceed with an appeal against the High Court decision which was given in a 872-page judgment on April 7th, 2001. The amount of the security was to be decided by the Master of the High Court and was later set at €1.6 million.

In their unsuccessful High Court action which ran over a number of years, the Superwood companies claimed nearly €100 million compensation from several insurance companies following the fire which destroyed a storage facility for waste plastic on October 26th, 1987. The action was dismissed with costs against the Superwood side running into millions of pounds.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court was told by Dr Michael Forde SC, for the Superwood side, that they could not raise the €1.6 million security for costs and were now seeking to address that difficulty. The grounds had now been re-formulated and made more precise. If Superwood was permitted to amend the notice of appeal, the costs would vary accordingly.

Counsel said there were more than 300 grounds of appeal but the application now was to allow many of those to be dropped.

The amount of security for costs (€1.6 million) had been ordered on the basis that there were going to be some 300 grounds of appeal. Superwood's present position was that it could come up with approximately €600,000 for security for costs.

Mr Forde indicated that if the 300 grounds of appeal were to stand, the appeal could take about 20 days. If the amended set of grounds were allowed, the appeal would take three or four days. The Chief Justice, Mr Justice Keane, said the proceedings were stayed until such time as the appellants complied with the order for security for costs.