Dunnes Stores has been ordered by the High Court to reopen the doors leading from its shop in Edward Square Shopping Centre, Galway, which it disabled in June.
Mr Justice Brian J McGovern said the doors had been operated normally onto Castle Street and Barrack Lane, Galway, for the previous 15 years as a means of access to and egress from the centre for customers of all stores in the centre.
He granted Camiveo Limited, landlords of the shopping centre, an injunction against Dunnes Stores restraining the continued locking of the doors and said that if the automatic opening mechanism remained disabled a technician could be found to open them immediately.
Judge McGovern told Declan McGrath SC, counsel for Dunnes, that the injunction would continue until the full hearing of the substantive trial of the issues regarding the doors between Dunnes and Camiveo.
In a reserved judgment he said it appeared the doors had been designed and intended to be the main entrance-exit at the shopping centre although there were a number of other entrances-exits at other locations. Castle Street - Barrack Lane was the common concourse from which all the shops in the centre could be accessed.
He was satisfied the landlord had raised a fair or serious question to be tried later by the court. Dunnes was the anchor tenant which was of some significance.
“If the purpose of having an anchor tenant is to draw shoppers to the premises of that tenant and thereby benefit the other tenants in the centre it would seem odd and contrary to normal commercial letting principles that the premises of the anchor tenant cannot be accessed from Castle Street-Barrack Lane,” the judge said.
Dunnes had raised a number of issues as to why an interlocutory injunction should not be granted, one of which was the fact that there was no “keep open” clause in its lease.
He said the point was not whether Dunnes was obliged to keep the store open at all times or at particular times but rather whether the doors should be used as a means of ingress to and egress from the store during its trading hours.
Cormack MacEochainn, of Douglas Newman Good, had told the court that the doors in question were always perceived as the main and front doors of the anchor unit. While this may be open to debate at the substantive hearing this statement did appear to be supported by the plans and photographs which had been produced to the court.
The judge said there was a substantial body of evidence to suggest that in the minds of the planning authority, linkage between the Edward Square Shopping Centre and Eyre Square Shopping Centre was important in helping to create connectivity between different parts of the city centre.
Auveen Byrne had stated that planning a pedestrian route through a particular premises to link one part of a city centre to another would be unusual. This may well be so and was something that would have to be thrashed out at the full hearing in determining whether or not Dunnes was in breach of planning permission as contended by the landlord.
“But at this stage it seems to me that the plaintiff has met the test of setting out a fair bona fide question to be tried on this issue and spe;cifically whether such connectivity is being impeded by the defendant closing the doors,” Judge McGovern said.
He was satisfied Dunnes, as anchor tenant, was obliged to keep the doors open when it was trading for the benefit of the other occupiers of premises in the Edward Square Shopping Centre and create connectivity between different parts of the city.
Dunnes had shown evidence that it would be unfairly inconvenienced by making the doors available to all customers until the final determination of the dispute. The landlord had shown that its other tenants had been affected by the closure of the doors.
The judge said he was satisfied the landlord was entitled to an interlocutory injunction restraining Dunnes from disabling the automatic opening mechanism of the doors.