Michael Scully has lost a Supreme Court appeal in the latest bout of his legal battle with former investors in a fund he was the frontman for. It means there is no legal route in Ireland to preventing the execution of the €6.33m judgment in favour of Coucal Limited, a group of shareholders, against Michael Scully.

Back in 2006, Castle Carbery Properties Ltd set up a special purpose vehicle fund (SPV) named Coucal SPV. Seventy-eight people invested in the purchase of land and the development of a shopping centre in Opole, Poland, through this fund.

This fund failed, and later 63 of the investors set up Coucal Limited, mirroring the name of the investment vehicle, to pursue a legal claim against Mr Scully in Poland.

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In 2021, Coucal Limited gained a judgment for over €6.33m against Mr Scully in Poland’s Court of Appeal. The court found that Mr Scully had purported to enter into agreements on behalf of Coucal SPV shareholders “wrongfully and without authority”.

The members of Coucal SPV, who are all Irish, sought to execute this judgement in Ireland. Mr Scully fought this in the High Court, on grounds highlighting aspects of how the case was heard that his legal team argued contravened Irish law.

He lost his case in the High Court, but won in the Court of Appeal in 2024. Then, in May 2025, that decision was considered by the Supreme Court, who found in favour of Coucal Limited and against Mr Scully.

The Supreme Court subsequently heard an appeal based on Mr Scully’s challenge to the validity of the Polish judgement and its enforcement in Ireland on the grounds that one of the judges presiding over the Polish case would not have jurisdiction to do so in an Irish court of similar standing. In a judgment delivered by Justice Brian Murray last Thursday ,27 November, the Supreme Court rejected this contention.

“When the proceedings giving rise to this application came before the Court of Appeal in Warsaw, the identity of the three judges who would hear the respondent’s appeal was known, or capable of ascertainment,” it states.

“The respondent (Mr Michael Scully) knew, or could have found out, that Judge Anna Straczynska was not a judge of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw, but of the Regional Court in Warsaw.

“It was a matter of public record that she had been seconded to the Court of Appeal in Warsaw by the Minister for Justice for Poland pursuant to Article 77 of the Law of 27 July 2001 on the Organisation of the Ordinary Courts.”

The judgment concludes that the appropriate place to raise this issue was in the Polish courts.

“I would in addition dispose of this aspect of the appeal on the basis that the failure of the respondent to raise before the Warsaw Court of Appeal the contention that Judge Straczynska’s secondment was unlawful, precludes the issue being raised in this application.”

Justice Gerry Hogan held that there is no suggestion that the selection by lot of Judge Straczynska to sit on this particular panel of the Polish Court of Appeal in a civil matter could realistically give rise to any concerns that she was subject to external control or that her judicial independence was in any way jeopardised.