Gayle Killilea Dunne fails to get asset transfer case halted

Gayle Dunne, wife of property developer Seán Dunne, has failed to get High Court orders halting proceedings aimed at setting aside alleged invalid transfers to her of various assets of her husband.

The assets involved have a value of some €100 million and the action aimed at setting the transfers aside has been brought by Chris Lehane, the official administering Mr Dunne's Irish bankruptcy.

Mr Lehane's proceedings against Mrs Dunne relate to two alleged agreements between Mr Dunne and his wife in 2005 and 2008 concerning assets including the Lagoon Beach Hotel, Cape Town, South Africa, and interests in assets including properties in Dublin and Co Wicklow along with a property on Shrewsbury Road, Dublin.

Mr Dunne filed for bankruptcy in March 2013 in the US state of Connecticut, where he was based.

In July 2013, he was adjudicated bankrupt by the High Court in Ireland and later failed to have that adjudication set aside.

Mrs Dunne says the transfers being challenged were entered into as compensation, when she and Mr Dunne started a family, for her career as a journalist and her prospective career as a lawyer. She says agreements were reached between herself and Mr Dunne in March 2005 and in 2008 and a formal share transfer took place in October 2008.

Mr Lehane claims the alleged agreements have no legal status.

In a preliminary motion, Ms Dunne with an addresses at Greenwich, Connecticut and London, sought to have Mr Lehane's proceedings aimed at setting aside the transfer discontinued.

She claimed the transfers are already subject of bankruptcy proceedings in the US, where Mr Dunne has also been adjudicated bankrupt, and any proceedings over the transfers should be decided in the US.

The Irish proceedings are oppressive, involve duplication of issues before the US courts, Ireland is not the proper forum for them and the proceedings are an abuse of process, she argued.

It was also argued Mr Lehane lacked legal standing to seek to set aside the transfers because the estate of Mr Dunne was vested in the US trustee.

Mr Lehane denied any unfairness or abuse of process. The assets involved were either Irish assets or entities held through an Irish company and the transfers culminated in an Irish share transfer and the assignment of Irish loans payable by Irish companies, he argued.

None of the assets, transfers or assignment had any connection with the US, he said. The only connection with the US was the Dunnes went there after the economic turmoil of 2008, he added.

In her judgment, Ms Justice Caroline Costello ruled Mrs Dunne had failed to establish Ireland was not the correct forum for the trial of the proceedings.

Ireland is the forum with the “most real and substantial connection” to dispute the subject matter of the proceedings, she said.

Mrs Dunne had failed to establish there was another jurisdiction where it was more convenient for the issues to be tried and determined.

Mrs Dunne had also failed to establish the continuation of the proceedings amounted to an abuse of process or represented an injustice to her, the judge held. The case has been adjourned to October.