The High Court yesterday dismissed an application by Eircell to discharge a judgment against it for £245,666.
Mr Justice O'Neill refused to set aside the judgment, granted by the Master of the High Court in February in favour of Commercial Communications Sales Ltd, trading as Cellular World Ltd.
The judge refused to put a stay on his order. He said that in meeting the judgment Eircell must also pay 8 per cent interest on the outstanding sum from April 1st, 1999, up to yesterday.
In his decision, Mr Justice O'Neill said nowhere was it asserted by Eircell that the services for which judgment was sought were never performed and nowhere was the outstanding sum disputed.
Nothing in the affidavits presented in court suggested there was a defence by Eircell to Cellular's claim, the judge said. Awarding costs to Cellular, Mr Justice O'Neill said it would be disproportionate and unfair to put a stay on his order and thereby deprive Cellular of the benefit of the judgment.
During the action, Eircell claimed that under a three-year deal Cellular had promised to effect 50,000 new connections to Eircell's network with Eircell putting up two investment sums of £300,000 to help strengthen the company's marketing position.
But shortly after the agreement became effective in October 1996, it became apparent the number of targeted connections would not be achieved, Eircell claimed. When Cellular was taken over by Esat Digifone in August 1988, Eircell alleged an internal memo in Cellular had asked staff to charge customers £30 more for an Eircell connection than a Digifone one.
According to Eircell, it lost 36,441 customers and revenue of £82.5 million as a result of Cellular's activities up to October 1999.