Court of Appeal dismisses appeal against Registrar's leave to execute costs order for non-payment due to delay.

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THE COURT OF APPEAL

CIVIL

Appeal Number: 2023/298

Faherty J. Neutral Citation Number [2025] IECA 93

Allen J. O’Moore J.

BETWEEN

ARNAUD D. GAULTIER

APPELLANT

AND

THE REGISTRAR OF COMPANIES

RESPONDENT

JUDGMENT of Mr. Justice Allen delivered on the 6th day of May, 2025

1. On 8th March, 2013 the High Court (Dunne J.) made an order for the payment by Mr. Gaultier of the costs of a failed challenge by way of judicial review to the dissolution by the Registrar of Companies of a company called Loire Valley Limited by reason of that company’s failure to file the accounts and returns required by law. Those costs were eventually taxed in the sum of €25,215.06.

2. In the circumstances fully set out in the judgement of Faherty J. delivered on 7th March, 2025 ([2025] IECA 58) that order was not executed within six years. In very broad terms, there were several appeals against and challenges to the costs order, which culminated in a determination of the Supreme Court made on 20th January, 2020 refusing an application by Mr. Gaultier for leave to appeal. ([2020] IESCDET 2) Soon thereafter, and for a considerable time, the ordinary business of the High Court was significantly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

3. By notice of motion issued on 28th March, 2022 the Registrar applied to the High Court for an order pursuant to O. 42, r. 24 of the Rules of the Superior Courts giving leave to issue execution on foot of the costs order and, for the reasons given in a written judgment delivered on 28th July, 2023 ([2023] IEHC 461), the High Court (Barr J.) made the order sought. In essence, Barr J. was satisfied that the Registrar had sufficiently explained the delay in execution, and that Mr. Gaultier had not shown that he had been prejudiced by the lapse of time.

4. Mr. Gaultier appealed to this Court against the judgment and order of the High Court granting leave to issue execution – as well as a further ruling refusing to re-open the judgment on the substance of the motion. For the reasons given in the judgment of Faherty J. of 7th March, 2025 (with which O’Moore J. and I agreed) this Court decided that Mr. Gaultier’s appeal should be dismissed.

5. The submissions made by Mr. Gaultier in support of his appeal were carefully and comprehensively addressed in the judgment of Faherty J. The gravamen of his appeal to this Court – which reflected his opposition in the High Court – was that the High Court order of 8th March, 2013 (which had been affirmed by this Court on 23rd July, 2019 [2019] IECA 210) was “void ab initio”. The proposition was that the High Court costs order never existed and that it – and Mr. Gaultier’s appeal against it and challenges to it – should be disregarded. For the reasons given in the judgment of Faherty J., Mr. Gaultier’s attempts to impugn the previous orders was entirely impermissible.

6. At para. 117 of the judgment of Faherty J., the Court noted that the Registrar was presumptively entitled to an order for her costs of the appeal but indicated that should either party – effectively Mr. Gaultier – wish to contend for any other costs order, a short costs hearing would be scheduled. Mr. Gaultier duly notified the Court of Appeal office that he wished to contest the indicative costs order, and a hearing was scheduled for 11th April, 2025 to deal with the question of costs.

7. Late in the afternoon of 10th April, 2025, Mr. Gaultier presented to the Office – and served on the Registrar’s solicitors – a fourteen-page written submission. The Court had not invited any written submission and Mr. Gaultier’s document clearly went far beyond the question of the allocation of the costs of the appeal, but the Court nevertheless received it and permitted Mr. Gaultier to speak to it.

8. Mr. Gaultier first sought to agitate – as what he characterised as a preliminary issue – an issue which he had previously sought to agitate at the hearing of an unrelated appeal, which was his dissatisfaction with a decision made against him in other proceedings by a panel which included Mr. Justice O’Moore.

9. In a judgment delivered on 29th April, 2024 in Gaultier v. Reilly [2024] IECA 102, in which O’Moore J. concurred, Meenan J. found that Mr. Gaultier was wrongfully threatening the second respondent to that appeal to either settle with him or incur further legal costs in circumstances in which he, Mr. Gaultier, had put his assets into his wife’s name with a view to defeating any costs orders that would be made against him. That, said the Court, could not be considered as anything other than a gross abuse of the legal system by Mr. Gaultier.

10. That judgment on 29th April, 2024 was delivered on an appeal by Mr. Gaultier against the refusal of certain interlocutory reliefs. In the meantime, Mr. Gaultier’s action against Mr. Reilly and the other defendants had been dismissed by the High Court as frivolous and vexatious, and on 14th January, 2025 Mr. Gaultier’s appeal against that order came before a panel which included O’Moore J. Mr. Gaultier then expressed his dissatisfaction with the judgment which had been delivered on 29th April, 2024 and objected to O’Moore J. hearing the appeal unless he first apologised to Mr. Gaultier for his concurrence with the judgment of Meenan J. The Court then took Mr. Gaultier’s declared position as being in substance an application for the recusal of O’Moore J. and had no hesitation in rejecting it.

11. Similarly, when Mr. Gaultier sought to agitate the same grievance at the hearing on 11th April, 2025, the Court had no hesitation in dismissing it.

12. Mr. Gaultier then proposed that the Court should review the judgment which had been delivered on the substantive appeal on the grounds that (1) “Ireland is not really a common law jurisdiction”, (2) “The role of the courts is not to administere [sic.] justice but to vindicate the rights of citizens”, and (3) “There is nothing in the Constitution which obliges the Court to use an adversarial process, or which prevents the Court to use an inquisitorial process when needs be.” Mr. Gaultier submitted that none of these propositions had ever been argued in the Irish courts and relied on an observation said to have been made by O’Dálaigh C.J. in The State (Quinn) v. Ryan [1965] I.R. 70 that “what has not been argued has not been decided.”

13. The proposition that the Court should re-open the substance of the appeal by reference to arguments which were never previously made is misconceived.

14. Mr. Gaultier is dissatisfied with the judgment of the Court on the substance of the appeal. He now complains that the judgment did not address his argument or assertion that he was entitled to an effective remedy. This appears to hark back to his objection to O’Moore J. being a member of the panel assigned to hear his appeal, which was disposed of before the panel embarked on the hearing of the substantive appeal.

15. Mr. Gaultier complains that the judgment of Faherty J. did not address all of his arguments. Mr. Gaultier does not recognise any distinction between what he says and his arguments. He relies on the 2021 edition European Court of Human Rights Guide on Article

6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which in Section IV.A.7 addresses “Reasoning of judicial decisions.” However, he fails to recognise that a court is not obliged to address all of a party’s submissions, still less all that a party has to say. I accept the principle that a court is required to examine the litigant’s main arguments and to address specifically and expressly any submission that is decisive for the outcome of the proceedings. The judgment of Faherty J. did that: and, indeed, went further than it needed to. Mr. Gaultier’s main argument – said to be decisive for the outcome of the appeal – was that the High Court costs order, which had been affirmed on appeal, was “void ab initio”. That proposition was – and is – plainly misconceived.

16. The only valid issue on the appeal was whether the High Court judge could be shown to have erred in his conclusion that the delay in executing the costs order had been sufficiently explained or that Mr. Gaultier had not been prejudiced. Neither in the High Court nor on the appeal did Mr. Gaultier attempt to engage with the irrefutable evidence of the circumstances in which execution was delayed; nor did he attempt to suggest that he had been prejudiced. Instead, he doggedly insisted that he was not bound by an order that he did not like.

17. In his written submission on what was supposed to have been confined to a costs application, Mr. Gaultier asserted that whatever was said in the judgment as to what he said or did not say was personal data, which was covered by s. 92 of the Data Protection Act, 2018 and he applied for “rectification of [his] personal data in the judgment”. He did not identify what precisely it was that he contended was in the judgment which ought not to have been included, or what had been omitted which he contended ought to have been included. Doing the best I can, the complaint appears to be that the judgment did not address – line by line – all that Mr. Gaultier had to say at the hearing of the appeal.

18. Mr. Gaultier’s submissions on the appeal are not personal data and the Court was not obliged to go through his submissions line by line.

19. In his written submission. Mr. Gautier expressed his “overall satisfaction” with the structure of the judgment of Faherty J. but said that he “wanted [his] submissions to be exactly represented.” He is entitled to his preference, but not that it should have been met.

20. Finally, Mr. Gaultier addressed the question of the costs of his failed appeal. In his oral presentation he correctly acknowledged that the entirely successful respondent was presumptively entitled to an order for costs, but he argued that this case came within one or more of the exceptions to the rule. In his written submission, he correctly identified the exceptions – the conduct of a party, the conduct of the proceedings, a test case, and a public interest challenge – and in his oral presentation referred to the relevant passages from Delaney & McGrath on Civil Procedure. He submitted that the appropriate costs order was an order awarding him the costs, as well as damages for his time and trouble dealing with the appeal.

21. Mr. Gaultier first submitted that the fact that the Registrar had not written to him before issuing the High Court motion was, variously, something which the Court could take into account, and amounted to unreasonable conduct or impropriety which fell into the category of misconduct. Having made that submission, Mr. Gaultier immediately and candidly acknowledged that if such a letter had been written, he would have objected to the application but said that he would have issued a motion to set aside the various orders.

22. The High Court application for leave to issue execution was required by the Rules of the Superior Courts and could not have been avoided by the writing of any letter. Moreover, on Mr. Gaultier’s own case, any such letter would not only have been a waste of time but would have precipitated an attempted collateral challenge to the validity of the various orders of the High Court, this Court, and the Supreme Court. Such a motion would have been an abuse of process.

23. As to the conduct of the proceedings, Mr. Gaultier contended that the Registrar had alleged that he was at fault or responsible for the delay by using his constitutional right to appeal. That is simply not so. Mr. Gaultier had and exercised a right of appeal against the High Court costs order and execution was postponed by the Registrar while his appeal to this Court was pending, and again pending the determination of his Supreme Court leave application. The Registrar relied on Mr. Gaultier’s appeal and leave application not by way of criticism but as explaining the delay in executing the costs order.

24. Mr. Gaultier was also critical of the Registrar for issuing and pursuing the taxation process while the High Court order was under appeal but there is no merit in that.

25. Finally, Mr. Gaultier argued that his appeal was a test case because he was asking this Court – as he had asked the High Court – to revise the test for renewal of an execution order by introducing a new requirement that the High Court, on an application for leave to issue execution, should first of all examine the validity of the underlying judgment. For the reasons given first in the judgment of the High Court and again in the judgment of Faherty J., Mr. Gaultier’s proposition that the order of 11th March, 2013 was “void ab initio” was completely misconceived.

26. Mr. Gaultier does not seriously contest the Registrar’s submission that she was entirely successful on the appeal. I accept entirely the Registrar’s submission that it was not appropriate that Mr. Gaultier should have sought to reventilate on the costs application the issues which were comprehensively addressed in the judgment of Faherty J.

27. I would affirm the order of the High Court and make an order for the adjudication of the Registrar’s costs of the appeal – including, for the avoidance of doubt, the costs of the hearing in relation to costs – and for payment by Mr. Gaultier of those costs when so adjudicated.

28. As this judgment is being delivered electronically, Faherty and O’Moore JJ. have authorised me to say that they agree with it and with the orders proposed.