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Former husband and wife Gayle Killilea and Sean Dunne.
A US appeals court has dismissed appeals by the Irish businessman Sean Dunne and his former wife, Gayle Killilea, against a jury finding that Mr Dunne fraudulently transferred millions of euro in assets to Ms Killilea, including a mansion on Dublin’s Shrewsbury Road.
The 2019 verdict made Ms Killilea liable to pay €18m in damages to the bankruptcy trustee of Mr Dunne, one of Ireland’s most recognisable Celtic Tiger era property developers.
The former couple had lodged separate appeals to the 2019 verdict.
“We have considered Dunne’s and Killilea’s arguments and find them unpersuasive,” said the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.
“After an independent review of the record and the applicable law, we affirm the judgment entered in the case for substantially the same reasons as those set forth by the district court in its thorough and exceptionally well-reasoned rulings on Dunne’s and Killilea’s post-trial motions.”
Ms Killilea and Mr Dunne had argued that the US district court had erred by not granting a new trial and for disregarding an Irish High Court judgement relation to a Shrewsbury Road mansion, Walford, at the centre of the case. The two also argued that the court was wrong to limit the testimony of their expert on Irish trust law and that it was wrong in failing to grant post-trial relief for the purportedly inconsistent jury verdict for both the Shewsbury Road house and properties on Dublin’s North Quay Wall.
Some €14m of the monies involved related to the sale of the Shrewsbury Road property, Walford, which once sold for €58m.
The verdict is the latest chapter in the protracted case of Mr Dunne. The case has been ongoing for a decade, involving countless hearings on both sides of the Atlantic and legal costs of over €12m.
The Carlow-born businessman was living in Connecticut when he filed for bankruptcy in 2013 with debts of €700m.
The bankruptcy case became a battle between Mr Dunne’s bankruptcy trustee Richard Coan on one side and Mr Dunne and Ms Killilea on the other over asset transfers made by him to her. The former couple maintained the transfers occurred when Mr Dunne was fully solvent. But Mr Coan alleged several were fraudulent and designed to put money beyond the reach of creditors.
But Mr Dunne’s team argued that Mr Dunne contracted to purchase Walford for Ms Killilea in 2005 and that she was the sole beneficial owner from that date.
Mr Dunne’s lawyer told the appeals court that the verdict handed down in that case had ‘impinged’ on his client’s reputation and “destroyed” his life.
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