The opening of the hearing of John Magnier’s High Court action against the owners of the Barne Estate was delayed on Thursday after lawyers for the billionaire criticised alleged “egregious deficiencies” in the pretrial discovery process.
Caren Geoghegan SC, for Mr Magnier, said “specific deficiencies” in terms of the defendants’ discovery of documents had emerged, including questions around their compliance with discovery requests.
This included a failure to search an email inbox of Richard Thomson-Moore – whose family have owned the Co Tipperary estate since the 17th century – and an incorrect claim of privilege over certain documents, counsel said.
Martin Hayden SC, for the defendants, pushed back against the suggestion that discovery orders were not complied with.
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However, he said he was unhappy with elements of the discovery process, specifically referencing the failure to search Mr Thomson-Moore’s inbox. He said he was willing to review the discovery process.
Mr Magnier – along with his adult children John Paul Magnier and Kate Wachman – wants to enforce an alleged deal for the sale of the 751-acre farm outside Clonmel for €15 million. They say the deal was struck with the owners of the Barne Estate at an August 22nd, 2023, meeting at Mr Magnier’s Coolmore Stud.
The defendants – Barne Estate Ltd, Mr Thomson-Moore and associated Jersey-registered companies – deny there was any such agreement. They subsequently agreed to sell the estate to construction magnate Maurice Regan for €22.5 million.
Ms Geoghegan said an affidavit filed on Wednesday by the defendant’s solicitors McDermott, Creed & Martyn suggested that only records of communications contained in phone messages and emails were disclosed to them during the discovery process.
She said there was a concern other such records – perhaps contained in a typed or handwritten notes – that should have been disclosed under their discovery requests were not.
The second issue at hand was confirmation by the defendants that an email address used by Mr Thomson-Moore was not searched or extracted from during the discovery process, Ms Geoghegan said.
A letter sent by the defendants’ solicitors on Wednesday said the inbox was not searched by Johnson Hana, a legal services firm employed in the discovery process.
The letter expressed regret for the “shortcoming” and said the firm was unaware until yesterday that the inbox had not been searched.
Ms Geoghegan said it was difficult to understand how “such a serious deficiency could have occurred”.
She said the “most serious” discovery issue related to a document of 60-odd pages of typed notes written by John Stokes, a Tipperary-based estate agent, received by the plaintiff’s side on Wednesday.
Ms Geoghegan said the Microsoft Word document contained a series of entries on different dates, where Mr Stokes makes notes of conversations with various people, messages and meetings, including the August 2023 meeting at Coolmore Stud when the sale was allegedly agreed.
She said privilege was incorrectly claimed over this document and that “any competent person” who looked at the notes could not possibly take the view that it was appropriate to mark them as fully privileged.
“They should have been discovered long ago,” she said.
That a document of this nature – which she claimed contains “many references adverse to the defendants’ interests” – was not discovered reflected “a fundamental error in approach to privilege”.
Mr Hayden said he was willing to conduct an entire review of the discovery process and that he was also unhappy with elements of it, referencing the failure to search Mr Thomson-Moore’s inbox.
He said the plaintiff’s lawyers were attempting to portray his clients as seeking to deliberately conceal information or not furnish documents.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.
Mr Hayden pushed back on the assertion by Ms Geoghegan that his side had not complied with the plaintiff’s discovery orders. He said the discovery requests – which were subject to negotiation – specifically sought “communications”.
“For reasons unclear to me, they chose the wording they chose,” Mr Hayden said. “I’m being pilloried here today for complying with what, I say, they looked for.”
In the case of Mr Stokes' document, he said it amounted to “a rolling diary of events” and not a record of communication.
He said the document supported the defendants’ case, disputing Ms Geoghegan’s view.
Mr Justice Michael Quinn adjourned the case to Friday.
