The personal finances of Geoffrey Shannon, founder of activist group Unhappy Banking, have been dealt a blow by a Full Federal Court judgment handed down in Sydney last Friday. The Court dismissed Shannon's appeal against an order, made by a single judge on 16 December 2013, to set aside a favourable personal insolvency agreement between Shannon and some of his creditors.This agreement, drafted at a creditors meeting on 26 June 2013, effectively sidelined the Commonwealth Bank by valuing multimillion dollar debts owed to Bankwest by Shannon (a former high-flying property developer) at $1.00 rather than the approximately $8.5 million sought by CBA, while at the same time allowing large debts owed by him to his father and sister to count.Unsurprisingly, CBA took action to have its position reassessed, and ultimately won a Federal Court ruling by a single judge, Justice Steven Rares, on 16 December, which effectively restored the CBA's position as Shannon's major debtor. The case ran despite Shannon's attempts on 13 December to postpone the hearing while he gathered further documentary evidence and lined up another witness and briefed his newly appointed firm of solicitors.In his reasons for refusing to grant a further adjournment - that is, proceeding with the trial on 16 December - Justice Rares stated that Shannon had made the request to postpone the hearing too late in the process. The judge, as part of his reasoning, added that Shannon's evidence was "largely documentary", and it was either available to him already or relatively easily obtained. Further, the judge said, Shannon had known of the trial - by his own admission - at least three weeks earlier, yet had chosen not to advise the court of his need to change dates.In that same 16 December ruling, the judge also ordered a sequestration order be made against Shannon's estate.Shannon's appealed to the Full Federal Court (heard by three judges) on the grounds of an alleged denial of procedural fairness. He alleged he was not afforded a proper opportunity to instruct new solicitors, and that the trial should have been postponed.In reviewing that decision and some of the proposed new evidence that was to have been submitted, one of the three judges, Justice John Logan, concluded that: "the totality of the further evidence is not likely to displace a conclusion that the terms of the personal insolvency agreement are unreasonable. "On the evidence before the primary judge, that proof of debt was rightly given its full value and, taken in conjunction with the CBA's admitted other proof of debt, no special resolution in favour of acceptance of the personal insolvency agreement could have been passed," Justice Logan said.The judge concluded that had any of the evidence that Shannon indicated he wanted to present been put to the trial judge in December, "the result in the proceedings would have been the same." His fellow judges, Justice Geoffrey Flick and Justice Melissa Perry provided their own comments, which were in line with those set out by Justice Logan.