As we head into a new Legal Year, we examine recent trends in debt recovery litigation. The Courts Service 2015 Annual Report noted, in the words of Chief Justice Ms. Susan Denham, “another busy year for the courts”. Indeed, the courts received 248,254 new civil cases in 2015, a very marginal decrease from the corresponding 2014 figure.

Default judgments

A recent decision by the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware in PAH Litigation Trust v. Water Street Healthcare Partners L.P. (In re Physiotherapy Holdings, Inc.), Case No. 13-12965 (KG) (Bankr. D. Del. June 20, 2016), may limit the types of transactions that are subject to the “safe harbor” protections of section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code.

The High Court has reiterated that cross-examination will not generally be permitted on an interlocutory application, or where there is no conflict of fact on the affidavits.

In McCarthy v Murphy,^[1] the defendant mortgagor was not permitted to cross-examine the plaintiff (a receiver) or a bank employee who swore a supporting affidavit.

Background

Two recent judgments have brought further clarity in relation to the rights acquirers of loan portfolios to enforce against borrowers:

In AIB Mortgage Bank -v- O'Toole & anor [2016] IEHC 368 the High Court determined that a bank was not prevented from relying on a mortgage as security for all sums due by the defendants, despite issuing a redemption statement which omitted this fact.

In order to understand this case, it is necessary to set out the chronology of events:

In early 2016, the Government commissioned an examination into laws protecting employees following the overnight closure of the historic Clerys department store in Dublin in June 2015, with the immediate loss of 460 jobs. We review the recently published report which sets out six key proposals for legislative reform.

The European Court of Justice has held that a director of an English company can be liable for breach of German company law where insolvency proceedings are opened in Germany.

A statutory instrument has recently been passed providing that the Third Parties (Rights Against Insurers) Act 2010 will, finally, come into force on 1 August 2016, some six years after it was first passed.

The act will replace and, in general, streamline the procedures put in place by the Third Parties (Rights Against Insurers) Act 1930. Perhaps the two most significant changes brought about by the 2010 Act are:

The Copenhagen Reinsurance Company (CopRe) asked the UK High Court to make an Order sanctioning the intra-group transfer of the whole of its (re)insurance business to the Marlon Insurance Company (Marlon). Each of CopRe and Marlon wrote US excess and surplus lines insurance, and each of them maintained an excess and surplus lines trust fund in New York. The purpose of the transfer was to simplify the structure of the Enstar group. If the transfer was sanctioned, CopRe would be dissolved without winding up.

As discussed in an earlier post called “Going Up: Bankruptcy Code Dollar Amounts Will Increase On April 1, 2016,” various dollar amounts in the Bankruptcy Code and related statutory provisions were increased for cases filed on or after today, April 1, 2016.