Brown envelopes and the Barne Estate: John Magnier’s battle to buy one of Co Tipperary’s most prized farms

Billionaire businessman John Magnier is no stranger to getting what he wants – as the British government and the former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, among many others, have found to their cost.

Mr Magnier managed to get the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to pay £50 million (€58 million) for Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Portrait of Omai, which the businessman had bought for a fraction of that price in 2002.

Similarly, Mr Magnier faced down Sir Alex Ferguson when the most successful football manager of his generation believed himself entitled to half the stud fees from the prize stallion Rock of Gibraltar. The case was settled out of court.

Mr Magnier is a man who usually gets what he wants, but in the case of the prized Barne Estate in Co Tipperary he may get a whole lot more than he bargained for when he decided to sue over it.

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The 751-acre estate with a mansion house modelled on an 18th century French chateau with manicured lawns in front running down to a lake stocked with trout came on the market for €13.5 million in July through Savills. Intact estates in the heart of the Golden Vale with demesne walls do not come to market very often.

The estate has been farmed by the Thomson-Moore family going back to Cromwellian times, though legally it is owned by a Jersey-based trust.

Mr Magnier thought he had a deal for it when he offered €15 million and shook hands with the current beneficial owner, Richard Thomson-Moore, over dinner and drinks at Coolmore House on August 22nd.

Those present included Mr Magnier, his wife, Susan, Coolmore farm manager Joe Holohan, and Mr Thomson-Moore and his wife Anna Thomson-Moore, along with the auctioneer involved in putting the estate up for sale, John Stokes.

The vendors admit handshakes occurred but say nothing became enforceable.

While the Magniers say the terms of the agreement were recorded in a sales advice note from the auctioneer, the owners, who have now become defendants in a dispute over the alleged sale that has come before the Commercial Court, say this note is incapable of constituting any sufficient recording of the meeting’s discussions.

[ Barne Estate owners seek damages in counterclaim against John Magnier and family members ]

It is denied by the defendants that the granting of a tillage licence for Mr Magnier to plough and sow some 650 acres of the estate “acknowledged the existence and binding nature” of the sale agreement.

The Barne side maintain the Magniers “well knew” the meaning and effect of a refundable booking deposit, which creates no binding sale contract. The sum – which was paid by Mr Magnier – was refunded upon the termination of negotiations, the defendants say.

Mr Magnier has been accumulating huge tracts of lands in Co Tipperary in recent decades.

According to Land Registry documents, Coolmore estate, which is owned by the Magnier family, has bought at least 170 farms in the county. This amounts to thousands of acres of land.

When Mr Magnier filed proceedings in the Commercial Court trying to enforce the sale of the Barne Estate, he would have done so on the basis that he had good grounds to believe he had bought the property.

Instead, Mr Thomson-Moore and his co-defendants have filed a robust defence which contains an allegation that Mr Magnier and his son John Paul delivered two brown envelopes with a total of €50,000 in cash to Mr Thomson-Moore and his sister Alexandra for their “personal use”.

The cash, which was allegedly delivered on September 7th, just over two weeks after the original “sale” took place, was a “purported effort to suggest the existence of an enforceable agreement”, according to the defence document before the court.

Two days later the brother and sister sent the cash back in the same envelopes via Mr Stokes to deliver to Mr Magnier.

Though Mr Magnier claimed that the €15 million offer he made for the farm constituted a sale, he nevertheless upped the bid to €16 million on October 6th this year and added €500,000 for the benefit of Mr Thomson-Moore’s son, who has cerebral palsy, according to the document.

Significantly, this offer came after solicitors for the Barne Estate on September 30th said they were not willing to extend an exclusivity agreement for the sale of the farm.

Mr Thomson-Moore and his solicitors have turned the case on its head by bringing a counterclaim against Mr Magnier alleging that the businessman had lodged a lis pendens in the High Court without being entitled to do so.

Lis pendens literally means “litigation pending” and its purpose is to put a party on notice that there is a dispute in relation to the property.

[ How John Magnier’s Coolmore bloodstock operation is buying up Co Tipperary ]

It is Mr Thomson-Moore’s case that, as there was no sale to Mr Magnier in the first place, he has no right to oppose the sale to someone else. The someone else in this case is Maurice Regan.

Mr Regan is the low-profile owner of New York-based construction firm JT Magen and the co-owner of the Mercantile Group which runs venues in Dublin including Café en Seine and the George pub. He is also the owner of Newtown Anner Stud, a 550-acre mixed farm outside Clonmel, Co Tipperary, which is run by his father. He has approximately 200 acres elsewhere in the county.

Documents seen by The Irish Times reveal that Mr Regan purchased the property from the Barne Estate Limited for €22.5 million on December 1st, a full 50 per cent more than Mr Magnier had originally offered. Mr Regan has already paid a deposit of €2.25 million for the estate.

Mr Thomson-Moore claims that Mr Magnier has “slandered the title of the property, causing loss and damage” to the sale of the Barne Estate to Mr Regan.

Though ostensibly this is a story about two immensely wealthy people fighting over the same farm of land, it is actually about a three-year-old boy with cerebral palsy who will need lifelong care. The sale of the land is to allow Mr Thomson-Moore and his wife to move to her home country of Australia to bring up their son and provide for his future needs there, where facilities are better than in this jurisdiction, the court heard.

The case is before the Commercial Court again on Thursday.

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