A High Court judge has ordered legal representatives for the owners of the Barne Estate to explain how they interpreted the wording of requests for documents sought by lawyers for billionaire businessman John Magnier as part of proceedings arising from a dispute between the two parties.
The court heard on Tuesday that lawyers acting for Mr Magnier in his action against the owners of the 751-acre farm outside Clonmel, Co Tipperary, had concerns that relevant documents had not been disclosed to them in advance of a scheduled three-week trial hearing, due to begin on Thursday.
Mr Magnier – alongside his adult children John Paul Magnier and Kate Wachman – wants to enforce an alleged deal for the sale of the estate for €15 million. They say the deal was struck with the owners of the estate at an August 22nd, 2023, meeting at Mr Magnier’s Coolmore Stud in Co Tipperary.
The defendants – Barne Estate Ltd, Richard Thomson-Moore, who is an owner of the estate, and associated Jersey-registered companies – deny there was never any such agreement, and subsequently agreed to sell the estate to construction magnate Maurice Regan for €22.5 million.
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Caren Geoghegan SC, for Mr Magnier, told Mr Justice Michael Quinn on Tuesday that it had emerged the defendants did not disclose to them a screenshot of a “contemporaneous note” made by John Stokes, a Tipperary-based estate agent, on or about the night of the August 2023 meeting.
Ms Geoghegan told the court that following a request for documents to Mr Stokes, who was present at the meeting at Coolmore Stud, they received in January the screenshot of the note Mr Stokes made on his phone.
Describing the note as a “key document”, Ms Geoghegan said that it made reference to the purported €15 million sale agreement and “various terms recorded”. She said the note was a “record” of what happened at the meeting and the communications between the individuals who were present.
The Barne Estate side received the screenshot from Mr Stokes in January last year, the court heard. Ms Geoghegan said the defendants provided several explanations justifying why the screenshot was not disclosed to them – one being that the note was not captured by their requests for discovery.
Ms Geoghegan said if the defence’s approach was not to discover the screenshot because it did not fall into the request criteria then it was her concern that other relevant notes that may be in existence relating to the meeting had not been disclosed to them.
Martin Hayden SC, for the defendants, said Mr Magnier’s lawyers specifically sought “communications” in their request for discovery of documents. He said the screenshot was “not a recording of a communication”.
Mr Hayden said that the note was not sent by Mr Stokes to anyone. He said that if the document was not communicated then “it is patently not a communication”.
“It’s his own document,” he said.
Mr Justice Quinn said it was not obvious to him that the note was a record of communication between “[Mr Stokes] and anyone else”.
He refused Ms Geoghegan’s application for an order for discovery to be made for any contemporaneous notes prepared by “key custodians” relating to the alleged deal.
However, the judge did order that the defendants file an affidavit explaining how they interpreted the requests for discovery of documents sent to them by the plaintiffs.
The case returns to court on Thursday.
