This was an appeal against the decision of Huddleston J at [2021] NIQB 22; [2022] LMCLQ 640, 642 §94.

The defendants appealed against the award of €944,469 compensatory damages and the trial judge’s order for costs against them. The judge’s decision on the more identifiably unjust enrichment heads of claim was not challenged.

In relation to the compensatory damages, the Court of Appeal (Sir Paul Maguire) accepted the appellants’ argument that the judge had commingled the issues of remoteness and mitigation of loss. This meant that he had not explained how he had rejected the appellants’ argument that the respondents failed to mitigate their loss.

So far as costs were concerned, the appellants argued that, as they had succeeded on more issues than they had lost, costs should be shared between the parties and not awarded in their entirety to the respondents. The Court of Appeal held that, while it could not find fault with the judge’s exercise of discretion, it would make no order as to costs until the mitigation issue had been resolved.

This case might be described as one of (attempted) preventative unjust enrichment.

The first defendant was registered as the owner of lands in County Tyrone in December 2000. On 11 January 2001, he deposited the land certificate relating to this property with the Northern Bank (the bank) as security for moneys advanced by it. On 14 August 2017, the first defendant executed a mortgage of this land in favour of the bank. On 3 April 2018, the bank appointed a fixed charge receiver over the land with a view to its sale. By memorandum of sale dated 15 January 2019, the receiver sold the lands to the claimants for £280,000. On 4 February 2019, the first defendant purported to rent the lands to the second defendant, who moved his cattle on to the lands, preventing the claimants from making use of them.