LEGAL BATTLE…Sean Quinn
WITH protracted legal battle due to start next Wednesday, 3rd June, the Quinn family, Sean and his wife, Patricia, and their children had a bit of good news on Wednesday last, 20th May with the birth of a second child to their son, Sean Jr and his wife, Karen.
At the time of writing, the child has yet to be christened, but, according to the family’s spiritual adviser, Fr Gerry Comiskey, the parish priest of Drumlane in Cavan, he will be named ‘Conor Hugh Quinn’.
“It’s the same name as Sean senior’s father, and I can confirm that the whole community between Cavan and Fermanagh are delighted for Sean Jr and Karen. They wish them well in their endeavours and that, of course, includes next week’s trial in Dublin.”
In a nutshell, Patricia Quinn and her five children are taking legal action against the former Anglo Irish Bank, now IBRC.
The family is claiming that some €2.34 billion in loans that the bank advanced to them were made for the unlawful purpose of propping up the bank’s plummeting share price.
The hearing is expected to go on for six months, and Fr Comiskey intends to be with the Quinns as much as he can to give them moral support.
“I imagine I will be with them some of the time, yes. By all accounts, it will be an ordeal for them, without a doubt.”
The younger Quinns, Sean Jr and Karen live in Castleknock in county Dublin. Their other child is Sean (2).
Ironically, the birth of their latest, Conor Hugh, featured in court last week at a hearing to make final directions for next week’s case.
The court was adjourned briefly to allow both sides to take instructions about a possible appeal by the Quinns against Mr Justice Robert Haughton’s decision the previous week in refusing to allow Mrs Quinn and her children to claim they were innocent parties to the disputed €2.34 billion transaction.
Mr Justice Haughton, who is hearing the case, refused the Quinns permission to amend their legal action to argue they never signed the final version of two of six share pledges under which Anglo Irish Bank took over their firms in 2011.
He told the family and their counsel he would give written reasons for his decision, but he indicated some of those reasons, namely the delay in seeking an amendment, that their plea regarding illegality was unenforceable, and that the amendment was, ‘a bid to recast their wrongdoing of the underlying lending’.
The Quinns’ barrister, Martin Hayden, SC, told the court he needed to take instructions from his clients once the written ruling became available.
According to the Irish Times, the legal costs of the case are already estimated at ‘several million euro, with the final bill expected to be multiples of that’.
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