Dunnes Stores headquarters must feel like a Berlin bunker these days, the company is in the wars that often. Meanwhile, the company's in-house legal team must be exhausted.
In the last four weeks alone, Dunnes has had five separate summary judgment High Court actions filed against it for alleged non-payment of debt. The retailer has not yet filed a defence to any of them, mind you, so it hasn't yet had its say.
But the whole point of a summary judgment application is that the plaintiff will try to convince the court the defendant clearly doesn’t have a case, hence the application for a summary result without trial.
Rather ironically, one of Dunnes opponents in one of the recently filed summary debt cases is Brinks Ireland, the cash handling group. Another debt action has been filed by Schindler, the company that supplies lifts and escalators. The sums at issue in that case might go up and down, one presumes.
Dunnes is also being sued this month by Irish Life Assurance and the developer Joe O'Reilly, in what appears to be a dispute over Dunnes' Ilac Centre outlet.
Chandos, a company used by US private-equity giant Varde Partners in its €170 million deal for Nama's Project Acorn portfolio of shopping centres, also recently filed a suit against it.
Aside from summary applications, Dunnes has had just the three plenary (trial-based) cases filed against it in the last few weeks. Overall, the company or its subsidiaries have been named as defendant in about 35 High Court cases this year. Where do they get time to actually run the company?
Outside of the courts, Dunnes has also had a number of high-profile disputes, most notably with its own staff. Employees held a strike in April, garnering much public and political sympathy in the process.
It all must feel like water off a duck's back for Dunnes chief executive Margaret Heffernan, however. Trade data this month shows that even while the world and its mother was screaming at Dunnes they were still shopping there.
Dunnes grew its sales over the last 12 weeks by 6.5 per cent. To Heffernan, that will be all that matters.
