High Court dismisses plaintiffs' application for injunctive relief to restore disabled advertising accounts and return pre-payments.

THE HIGH COURT

[2025] IEHC 699

[Record No. 2025/3613 P]

BETWEEN

BHBLASTED S.R.L. SOCIETA’ BENEFIT, BHBROKE S.R.L. AND BHNAILED S.R.L.

PLAINTIFFS

AND

META PLATFORMS IRELAND LIMITED

DEFENDANT

Judgment of Ms. Justice Bolger dated the 4th day of December 2025

Introduction

1. This is the plaintiffs’ application for interlocutory injunctive relief requiring the defendant to restore the accounts held by each of the plaintiffs with the defendant, along with additional or alternative reliefs that the plaintiffs say can be crafted by the court. Whilst the court does have jurisdiction to craft remedies different or in addition to that sought, ideally the court's focus should be on the remedy that the plaintiff has sought and on which the affidavit evidence of both parties is based.

2. For the reasons set out below, I am refusing this application.

Background

3. The plaintiff companies are registered in Italy and are involved in organising clients to advertise on social media especially using the features of the defendant’s Meta platform (hereinafter referred to as “the platform”). The plaintiffs have placed large numbers of advertisements on the platform over many years via their accounts with the defendant, for which substantial payment was made, including pre-payments that the defendant required to be made before advertisements were placed on the platform.

4. On 20 of December 2024, the defendant summarily and without any explanation, disabled the plaintiffs’ advertising accounts thereby removing approximately 11,560 of the plaintiffs’ clients’ advertisements. The plaintiffs could not place any new advertisements on the platform and were denied access to their invoice and billing records held by the defendant. The defendant retained the plaintiffs’ pre-payments which the plaintiffs say amounted to approximately €5 million.

The submissions of the parties

5. The plaintiffs say they seek to restore the status quo to allow them to continue trading pending the resolution of the proceedings. They aver that the disablement of their accounts has paralysed their operations causing immediate and escalating financial, operational and reputational harm, jeopardised their regulatory and tax compliance due to loss of access to invoicing and billing records and has threatened the viability of their business and the employment of a significant number of people. They maintain that the defendant's conduct is unlawful as a breach of contract and of representations made by the defendant in the established course of the parties’ dealings, constitutes an abuse of the defendant's dominant position contrary to section 5 of the Competition Act 2002 (which is pleaded in the Plenary Summons) and breaches the defendant's obligations under the Digital Services Act 2024 (which is not pleaded). The plaintiffs say that they have established a strong case for the relief sought. They assert that damages would not be an adequate remedy for them and that the balance of convenience therefore favours the interlocutory relief sought to prevent irreparable harm, preserve their assets and maintain the commercial status quo ante pending plenary hearing.

6. The plaintiffs claim they have a contractual right to notice and a contractual right to engage with the defendant to resolve any difficulties before their accounts are disabled in the manner that they were, which they say arises from the course of dealings between the parties. The plaintiffs aver that explicit and implicit representations were made to them including that, provided spending targets were met, they would have ongoing access to the platform which would not be terminated without cause or warning. The plaintiffs rely on the vast number of WhatsApp messages between the parties but significantly, they do not identify any specific representation confirming the rights (to notice and to engagement before accounts are disabled) for which they now contend. The plaintiffs’ counsel accepted that he could not point to an explicit representation that payment of more money would permit ongoing access but says that was because of the “organic nature of the communication between the parties over a long period of time” (Transcript at page 21). The plaintiffs do not challenge the written terms and conditions applicable to their contracts with the defendant but describe them as “nominal” and contend that the terms were qualified by the representations the plaintiffs say were made in the course of previous dealings, which the plaintiffs say gives rise to an estoppel because the defendant was precluded from “strictly relying on those terms and conditions, where we have relied to our detriment, on explicit or implicit representations that that’s not how things work” (Transcript at page 25).

7. The plaintiffs dispute any right on the part of the defendant to retain any prepaid balance in reliance on their course of dealings with the defendant. The grounding affidavit avers, at paragraph 37, that pre-payments were made to the defendant “on the basis of specific demands and representations that the Plaintiff Group would continue to have access to the Defendant’s platforms”. The plaintiffs have not identified any such specific demands and representations but rely on pages and pages of WhatsApp messages between them and the defendant’s agents.

8. The plaintiffs submit that the balance of justice rests with them given their ongoing loss of clients, goodwill and market position, their inability to service existing customers and their jeopardy to tax and regulatory compliance due to their loss of access to invoicing records. They say damages are not an adequate remedy because the ongoing retention of significant cash impairs operational visibility and investor and client relationships and raises tax and accounting risks because of their inability to access the billing data that was stored in their accounts that the defendant has disabled. The plaintiffs’ affidavit sets out tables of expenditure, balances and prepayments as of December 2024, showing turnover and profits for quarter one of 2024 and quarter one of 2025, which were stated to have been prepared from information taken from the plaintiffs’ management accounts. Those management accounts, or any other financial documentation, have not been exhibited, which makes it difficult to interrogate the plaintiffs’ claims of loss and inadequacy of damages.

9. The defendants cite the passage of 204 days from when the accounts were disabled to when the within application was issued and, in reliance on the decision of Murray J in Ryanair DAC v. Skyscanner Holdings Limited and Skyscanner 2018 Limited [2022] IECA 64, contend that the status quo is what prevailed immediately before the commencement of proceedings. The defendant denied that any of the representations contended for were ever made and emphasised the express terms and conditions which the plaintiff entered into with the defendant on each occasion they placed advertisements on the platform, which appear to contradict the nature of the rights for which the plaintiffs now contend. The defendant says those express terms and conditions permit them to disable the plaintiffs’ accounts without notice or engagement and to retain the pre-paid monies.

Strong case standard

10. The plaintiffs’ submissions address the standard of a fair question to be tried but also assert that the plaintiffs meet the higher standard of the strong case test. The strong case test is the correct standard to be applied, given the mandatory nature of the relief sought. The decision of Barrett J in Farina v. X Internet Unlimited Company [2025] IEHC 514 supports the view that an application such as that, that seeks to compel the defendant to reinstate suspended accounts, constitutes mandatory relief attracting the higher standard of a strong case test.

Written Terms and Conditions

11. The written terms and conditions applicable to the relationship between the plaintiff and the defendant include terms of service, self-serve ad terms, online invoicing terms, commercial terms, advertising standards, community standards and community payment terms. Those terms, according to the defendants, apply in respect of each advertisement placed by the plaintiffs on behalf of their clients and require compliance with the defendant’s standards. The contractual relationships were all between the plaintiffs and the defendants and not between the defendants and the plaintiffs’ clients. The commercial terms which the defendant said governs the use of their products for business or commercial purposes specifically provides, inter alia: "[Y]ou agree that you will ensure that any third party on whose behalf you access or use any Meta Product for any business or commercial purpose will abide by the applicable terms of use, including these Commercial Terms, the Meta Terms of Service and any applicable supplemental terms, and you represent and warrant that you have the authority to bind that third party to such terms."

Responsibility for the content of advertisements

12. The plaintiff has averred at paragraph 9 of their grounding affidavit that they act as an intermediary between their clients and the defendant, facilitating them in online advertising. They aver that their clients "are themselves responsible for the content and operation of their own advertising campaigns. They are also responsible for ensuring that their campaigns comply with Meta's applicable advertising policies". At paragraph 31, they aver that they have “no direct control over or responsibility for the content of advertising campaigns operated by its customers.” The plaintiffs offer no legal or evidential basis for their sworn denial of responsibility for the content of the advertisements or how that sits with the aforesaid written terms and conditions between them and the defendant that impose responsibility on the plaintiffs to abide by the defendant’s “applicable terms of use” for the use of the platform. In his submissions, counsel for the plaintiffs correctly acknowledged that “as between the plaintiff and the defendant, the plaintiff is responsible for ensuring that the ads comply with the applicable rules”. (Transcript at page 10).

13. The plaintiffs’ deponent affidavit does not address whether their clients’ advertisements did or did not breach the terms and conditions applicable to their agreement with the defendant but instead focuses on what the plaintiffs say are their rights to notice and engagement with the defendant before their accounts can be disabled.

14. The defendant exhibited screenshots of what they call "scam ads" but the plaintiffs say that the defendant’s failure to exhibit data identifying the specific advertisements or the accounts said to be in breach, or any underlying logs, metadata or correspondence, prevents them from verifying the nature, content or origin of the alleged violations. The plaintiffs say that they cannot "respond meaningfully to the allegations” (as per the plaintiffs’ written submissions at paragraph 32) as it is impossible for them to investigate the allegations of “scam ads”. Their written submission says that the defendant’s screenshots have no obvious link to the plaintiffs (at paragraph 43). The plaintiffs’ counsel confirmed to the court that the plaintiffs do not know the origin of the advertisements from which the screenshots were taken. That is despite the existence of account name information in the screenshots.

15. The plaintiffs have taken on contractual responsibility to “ensure that any third party on whose behalf you access or use any Meta Product for any business or commercial purpose will abide by the applicable terms of use” (as set out above at paragraph 11). For the plaintiff to comply with that contractual responsibility would seem to require some sort of monitoring of their clients’ advertisements to ensure adherence to the defendant’s terms of use. The plaintiffs have not identified what they did, if anything, to ensure compliance with their contractual commitments. Their stated position on affidavit (referred to at paragraph 12 above) that they do not control the content of their clients’ advertisements and that responsibility for their content rests with the clients, sits uncomfortably with their contractual obligations set out in the written terms and conditions.

16. I am not satisfied that the plaintiffs are completely unable to investigate the content of the screenshots exhibited by the defendant, at least given the account information the advertisements identify. The plaintiffs must have some ability to investigate their own clients’ advertisements, notwithstanding the vast number of them. Even if the plaintiffs are unable to investigate their own clients’ advertisements or to demonstrate how they were monitored in order to ensure compliance with the defendant’s standards, their inability to do so cannot assist them in seeking restoration of their accounts that were disabled for the advertisements’ asserted breach of the defendant’s standards, given the responsibility the plaintiffs agreed to take on for their clients’ compliance with the defendant’s terms of use. Those terms of use clearly require adherence with the defendant’s standards on the content of advertisements placed on the platform.

Conclusion on the strong case standard

17. The plaintiffs have not satisfied me that there is a strong case they will succeed at trial in securing the injunctive or other relief that they seek at this interlocutory stage. I am not satisfied that they have established a breach in the terms of their contract with the defendant, including by reference to the course of dealings contained in the WhatsApp messages between the plaintiffs and the defendant. The course of dealings within those messages demonstrates a practice of collaboration on issues that arose, most usually in relation to the payment of monies, and confirm that the plaintiffs must have known of the possibility of being locked out of the defendant’s platform if the defendant had issues with the plaintiffs. Such collaboration does not constitute a clear representation of the type referred to at paragraph 16 of the plaintiffs’ affidavit: "The Defendant’s agents repeatedly assured the Plaintiffs that, provided they met certain conditions, including compliance with policies and payment of fees, they would have ongoing access to the Defendant's platforms." In any event, the defendants have clearly challenged the plaintiffs’ compliance with their policies in the form of what they refer to as "scam ads".

18. I have seen no WhatsApp messages making representations that the plaintiffs have a right to notice of a pending suspension of their advertising accounts. The reference to notice in the express terms and conditions is qualified by the phrase "generally" and suspension without notice is provided for in certain circumstances. Neither have I seen any messages making representations giving rise to a right on the part of the plaintiffs to engage with the defendant before their accounts are disabled for non-adherence to the defendant’s standards.

19. In the absence of clear evidence of representations made after the written agreements were entered into, on which the plaintiffs relied to their detriment, the plaintiffs are not entitled to rely on estoppel to defeat the entire agreement clauses contained in the written terms and conditions. No such evidence was established here.

20. The written terms and conditions, referred to above, seem to permit the summary disablement of the plaintiffs’ accounts and the retention of prepaid funds. The fact that the plaintiffs say that there is a very large amount of money involved here does not alter the application of the terms and conditions to which the plaintiffs have agreed. The plaintiffs have not established a strong case that the course of dealings via the WhatsApp messages, contain representations of continued access once monies are paid such as could give rise to the estoppel for which the plaintiff contends.

21. The plaintiffs’ contractual obligations to adhere to the defendant’s stated standards is clear. The plaintiffs do not suggest that they complied with those standards (though neither do they accept that they did not) but rather, they take issue with the defendant’s failure to identify the problematic ads sufficiently by reference to metadata and other information. Whilst the screenshots exhibited by the defendant constitute somewhat limited evidence, they do include the name of the account for that advertisement. I do not accept the plaintiffs’ rejection of the screenshots as creating such a paucity of evidence such as to give rise to the right to the injunction sought.

22. I consider it significant that the defendant affords its customers a right of review and a separate complaints procedure. Neither procedure was availed of by the plaintiffs, they say because of the defendant’s failure to set out their position until they filed their replying affidavit on 22 August 2025. However, despite the lack of response from the defendant to the plaintiffs’ communications in early 2025 and to correspondence from their Italian and later their Irish solicitors (which the court does not condone), the plaintiffs were aware as far back as December 2024 that their accounts had been suspended. They knew or ought to have known from the written terms of their agreements with the defendant, that they had a right to a review and a right to invoke a complaints procedure. The lack of a response from the defendant to the plaintiffs’ messages and solicitors’ correspondence, and the lack of an explanation for disabling the accounts until receipt of the defendant’s replying affidavit on 22 August 2025 does not justify the plaintiffs’ failure to invoke either of the procedures that were available to them. To the extent that the plaintiffs say they were prejudiced by the lack of information from the defendant regarding the suspension of their ads, that prejudice may have been exacerbated by their own failure to invoke the procedures available to them.

23. The plaintiffs’ claim that the defendants have breached provisions of the Digital Services Act 2024, does not give rise to injunctive relief. No such relief is sought in the plenary summons. In any event, the Act itself provides for certain defences which the defendant says may apply here and even if there is a breach of the Act, the Act limits the remedy available to damages and not to injunctive relief.

24. The plaintiffs have not established a strong case of abuse of a dominant position as I have not been satisfied at this stage that section 5 of the Competition Act is engaged. The plaintiffs rely on a determination of the EU Commission of November 2024 that the defendant is dominant in the market for personal social networks and the national markets online display advertising and social media. The Commission’s report found that the defendant had abused that dominant position by imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified ad service providers. The plaintiffs claim that the defendant has abused its dominant position in dictating the nature, size and structure of the plaintiffs’ business, requiring the plaintiffs to depend on the defendant’s technical infrastructure and requiring the plaintiffs to spend millions of euro to create additional clients for the defendant and then shutting down the plaintiffs’ account and retaining their monies (paragraph 46 of the plaintiff submissions). They therefore claim that there has been a breach of section 5 of the Competition Act. However, the plaintiffs do not compete with the defendant. They are the defendant’s customer. Thus, that determination does not establish a strong case that the defendant’s actions in December 2024 in blocking the plaintiffs access to its accounts engaged the provisions of section 5. That will be a matter to be addressed at the trial of these proceedings.

25. Neither have the plaintiffs established a strong case that they are entitled to interlocutory relief to obtain their billing and invoice documentation held by the defendant. The plaintiffs’ own affidavit confirms the existence of some documentation including management accounts, albeit no such documents are exhibited. The plaintiffs have acknowledged that the defendant sent invoices and billing documentation to them by email, but they say that there are tens of thousands of those emails. That does not satisfy me of the need for interlocutory relief which they asked the court to craft pursuant to its inherent jurisdiction. Despite the alleged loss of access to invoicing and records, counsel for the plaintiffs confirmed that the plaintiffs have been able to make partial returns to the Italian tax authorities. It may be possible for the plaintiffs to seek this documentation by way of discovery and/or case management but that is a matter for the plaintiffs to address separately and does not give rise to interlocutory relief.

Balance of justice

26. If I am wrong in my findings above that the plaintiffs have failed to establish a strong case such as to give rise to any further consideration of an entitlement to injunctive relief, I am in any event satisfied that the balance of justice does not favour the granting of the injunctive relief sought. In that regard, I have considered delay and the adequacy of damages which are both relevant to the overall assessment of the balance of justice.

Delay

27. The plaintiff’s accounts were disabled on 20 December 2024. From 21 until 23 December 2024 and again on 13 and 17 January 2025, the plaintiffs sent WhatsApp messages to the defendant looking to restore the disabled accounts. Nothing further happened until over two months later when the plaintiffs’ Italian lawyers sent a warning letter to the defendant threatening proceedings in the event of no satisfactory response by 3 April 2025. The defendant's only response was by letter dated 10 June 2025 notifying the plaintiffs that certain personal accounts would be reactivated. The plaintiffs sent further pre-action warning correspondence from their Irish solicitors on 17 June 2025 threatening proceedings if the defendant failed to give an undertaking not to interfere with the plaintiffs’ accounts. Proceedings were issued on 26 June 2025. There was no application for short service and the within application seeking interlocutory relief was filed on 11 July 2025 and returned to 28 July 2025, some eight months after the accounts were disabled.

28. The plaintiffs failed to demonstrate the “reasonable expedition” expected of an applicant seeking interlocutory relief, as outlined by Keane J in Nolan Transport (Oaklands) v. Halligan 1994 WJSC HC 1550). The plaintiffs rely on the decision of Allen J in Wallace v. Kershaw [2019] IEHC 382, a case that involved very different circumstances, where the court expressly found that the defendant had no answer to the plaintiff's claim. No such finding is made here.

29. There was a delay in instituting the within application for which no satisfactory explanation was provided. That moves the balance of justice against the grant of the injunctive relief sought.

Adequacy of damages

30. I am mindful of the observations of the Supreme Court in their decision in Merck Sharp and Dohme that a court should be sceptical around the inadequacy of damages in a commercial context.

31. The plaintiffs claim that they have suffered ongoing loss of clients, goodwill and market position and that they now are unable to service existing customers and risk tax and regulatory compliance (although they have now managed to make partial tax returns). They have not exhibited any documentation to corroborate their claim of having lost unidentified clients. Neither is there anything to suggest a pending risk to their employees’ employment, apart from their deponent’s averment as to the risks that they face. They rely on what they claim is their reduced turnover by reference to what they say is contained in the management accounts that they have chosen not to exhibit.

32. The defendant exhibited a social media post confirming the plaintiffs’ hiring new employees in May 2025, at the very time the plaintiffs say they were experiencing challenges to the viability of their business.

33. The plaintiffs’ deponent has given an undertaking as to damages. The defendant asserts that if the relief sought is granted, they will be prevented from protecting their users against entities seeking to defraud, they will be required to do business on a worldwide basis with entities that they claim have acted in breach of their standards and will therefore suffer a loss that cannot be quantified or compensated by the plaintiffs’ undertaking. The plaintiffs challenge that on the basis that if their accounts are restored, they will continue to be subject to the defendant’s standards and will be required to remove advertisements that are in breach of those standards. That seems to me to be an attempt to shift responsibility for the content of the advertisements placed by the plaintiffs on behalf of their clients, from the plaintiffs to the defendant. The express terms and conditions of the contractual arrangements between the plaintiffs and the defendant (set out at paragraph 11 above) impose responsibility on the plaintiffs for ensuring that third parties comply with the defendant’s standards. Those terms do not require the defendant to review advertisements placed by the plaintiffs to see if they comply with the defendant’s standards, albeit it may be open to the defendant to engage in such a review.

34. The loss that the defendant says it will experience if the relief sought is granted is less amenable to being adequately compensated by damages than the loss of business and profit that the plaintiffs allege they have sustained. I am satisfied that the business loss and damage claimed by the plaintiffs can be quantified in damages. This is even more so now, given that the difficulties the plaintiffs had previously alleged they had encountered with their tax and statutory obligations seem to have been addressed, at least in part, by the partial returns that the plaintiffs’ counsel said had been made to the Italian tax authorities, alongside the absence of any evidence of any state body expressing concern about the plaintiffs’ compliance (or lack thereof) with their legal obligations.

Conclusions on the Balance of Justice

35. I have not been satisfied that the express terms and conditions to which the plaintiffs agreed in consideration of placing their clients’ advertisements on the platform, should be disapplied in the context of the within interlocutory application. That is a matter that will have to be determined at trial.

36. If the plaintiffs are correct about the defendant’s unlawful retention of its monies, that can be addressed by appropriate orders at trial. There could also an expedited hearing date if that were considered appropriate within case management.

37. For those reasons, I am satisfied that the balance of justice, taking account of the least risk of injustice, rests against the granting of the interlocutory relief sought by the plaintiffs.

Decision

38. I refuse the interlocutory injunctive relief sought and decline to craft alternative relief including the return of monies retained by the defendant or access to the plaintiffs’ billing and other records.

Indicative view as to costs

39. This is an interlocutory application and therefore, subject to a different standard than what is required to establish liability at trial. Order 99 rule 4 of the Rules of the Superior Courts requires the court to determine costs, unless it is not possible to do so justly on the interlocutory application. I have determined that the plaintiffs have failed to establish a strong case that they will succeed at trial, but that does not necessarily mean that the plaintiffs will fail at trial.

40. I have noted the defendant’s failure to give any information to the plaintiffs about the disablement of their accounts until they filed their replying affidavit in August 2025, despite prelitigation correspondence from the plaintiffs’ Italian and then their Irish solicitors.

41. I have regard to the decision of the Court of Appeal in the Yoplait Ireland Limited v. Nutricia Ireland Limited [2025] IECA 163 where the Court of Appeal confirmed that the costs of an interlocutory application should be determined unless justice requires otherwise. In that case, the High Court observed that the interlocutory application was subject to a special standard, not equivalent to the success or merits of the case at trial and held that the interests of justice required the costs to be reserved to the trial with a limit of 80% for the company that had been partially successful in the interlocutory application. That decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal.

42. Here the plaintiff has not been successful in their interlocutory application but as in the Yoplait case, that in itself, does not mean they will not succeed at trial.

43. My indicative view on costs is that the justice of the case will be met by reserving costs to the trial judge, who will have a more fulsome view of the entire evidence that may be available, whether from such discovery as may be agreed to or directed, replies to particulars, interrogatories and the evidence that may be given at trial.

44. I will hear the parties further on costs and any other orders to be made, along with such case management as may be appropriate, at 10am on 16 December 2025. If either party wishes to put in written submissions, they should be filed with the court at least 48 hours in advance of the matter coming back before me. Counsel for the plaintiffs: William Abrahamson SC, Donnchadh Woulfe BL. Counsel for the defendant: Kelley Smith SC, Gerard Downey BL.