C, the fifth claimant in this case and a litigant-in-person in these proceedings, held all the shares in a group of companies responsible for constructing the iconic Odyssey Building (now the SSE Arena) in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter. The companies had all gone through administration or liquidation and were now dissolved. The first claimant assigned its claim in this litigation to C. C was adjudicated bankrupt and his trustee-in-bankruptcy then assigned the claim back to C. The defendant was the successor to Anglo Irish Bank Corporation Ltd, which had financed the construction of the Odyssey Building. The claim arose out of the subsequent sale of the Odyssey Building, which proved to be highly loss making for C and his companies. Most of the grounds of claim advanced by C did not raise unjust enrichment issues. Two that did presented issues of breach of fiduciary duty and lawful act economic duress.

Held: (1) Anglo Irish Bank was not in breach of a fiduciary duty owed to the claimants because it was not a fiduciary. This was clearly not a status-based fiduciary relationship such as trustee and beneficiary or company director and company. It could only be a fiduciary relationship arising on the facts, but the evidence did not establish that the bank had assumed a duty to act in the best interests of C. (2) There was no lawful act economic duress because the bank had not crossed the line separating legitimate from illegitimate pursuit of its own commercial interests recognised by the Supreme Court in Times Travel (UK) Ltd v Pakistan International Airlines Corp [2021] UKSC 40.

The debtor company agreed to purchase a diesel engine for the notice party Dunaverty Ltd, which operates the Rathlin Ferry between Ballycastle and Rathlin Island. The order was placed with the supplier Scania (Great Britain) Ltd in late 2024 at a price of £50,944.80,