‘€280k from friend was a loan to help you, not a gift’
A VULNERABLE woman loaned €280,000 to her ‘best friends’ who claimed they feared losing their home – only to see them go on a US holiday and hire a limousine for their daughter’s debs, the High Court heard yesterday.
Fidelma ‘Della’ Kerrigan, 59, never got the large sum back because her close friends – a married couple – saw it as an ‘unsolicited gift’ which Ms Kerrigan had ‘insisted on giving them’ after she survived a 2002 car crash in which her father died and received €750,000 in compensation.
Giving judgment in the ‘tragic’ dispute, Judge Deirdre Murphy castigated architect John Keenaghan and his wife Jacqueline for an ‘arrogant and patronising’ attitude to a ‘very caring’ Ms Kerrigan.
The judge ruled that the six-figure sum was given as a loan and not a gift as the couple had claimed.
Dismissing Mrs Keenaghan’s evidence as ‘implausible and in many respects self-serving’, Judge Murphy ruled that the mother-of-three ‘became greedy’ after her friend collected injury compensation in 2010.
The case involved an ‘enormous breach of trust’ by the couple in later attempting to deny their debt to Ms Kerrigan, the judge said.
Later this month, the judge will decide on the exact final court orders that should be issued against the couple. This is expected to include an order against the pair for full repayment of the €280,000.
After emerging from yesterday’s High Court hearing, Ms Kerrigan told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘I’m glad it’s over. That’s all I want to say.’
Desmond Murphy SC, for the couple, had denied that Ms Kerrigan, from Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, was ‘preyed upon’ by his clients. Ms Kerrigan’s life changed forever in November 2002 when she took her father for a drive and a van crashed headlong into them. Her father died in the accident and she sustained ‘multiple life-threatening injuries’.
After Ms Kerrigan, who is single and lives with her sister, ‘became mobile’ again in 2007, Jacqueline Keenaghan had ‘kept asking’ about her then-upcoming personal injury claim, the court heard.
Mrs Keenaghan, a former legal secretary of Rathmore, Co. Donegal, had advised Ms Kerrigan of ‘the need to keep pressure’ on her solicitor about the case, it was heard.
After Mrs Keenaghan’s husband John’s architects business closed in 2009. the mother of three ‘cried at the prospect of losing her home and expressed concern about putting food on the table’, Ms Kerrigan had told the court.
In July 2010, Ms Kerrigan settled her personal injury case for €750,000 and Judge Murphy observed she wanted to help the Keenagahans. Ms Kerrigan had expected to offer €50,000, so she was ‘shocked’ when she was initially asked for some €240,000, the court heard.
‘However, she [Ms Kerrigan] felt honour-bound by her earlier agreement to help Jacqueline, and trusted her word that she would repay every penny,’ the judge said.
Ultimately, the figure of €280,000 was agreed on, and this was all handed over to Mrs Keenaghan by January 2011, it was heard.
Ms Kerrigan had been hurt to discover that her friend had gone on holidays to the US and hired a limo for her daughter’s debs, it was heard. Mrs Keenaghan ‘became greedy and sought a sum vastly in excess’ of her family’s debts, Judge Murphy observed yesterday.
The couple used some of the money to pay off their bank debts while giving tens of thousands to their three adult children. A further sum was used by the couple to help themselves train to become counsellors and set up a counselling business, the court heard.
‘Implausible and self-serving’