Personal Representative in UK Law

But a detailed witness statement or a list of documents cannot be used as a substitute for a short statement of all the facts relied on by the claimant. The statement must be as short as the nature of the claim reasonably allows. Where general damages are claimed, the statement of case should identify all the heads of loss that are being claimed.

In their Lordships' opinion, if excessive delay, and they agree that 12 months would normally justify that description, is to be relied on in attacking a judgment, a fair case must be shown for believing that the judgment contains errors that are probably, or even possibly, attributable to the delay. The appellate court must be satisfied that the judgment is not safe and that to allow it to stand would be unfair to the complainant.

In the case of the will subject to Section 2 of the Colonial Probates Act 1892, once that re-sealing has effect, the will is said by the statute to have the same effect as if grant had been made in the English court. That effect is that the will provides the authority for the appointment of the executor, not probate, which is merely the act of proving the will.

Accordingly, the resealing of the will caused the appointment of the executor to have effect as in the United Kingdom as if the will had been proved in the domestic courts. In those circumstances, the principle of Chetty v Chetty applies and the failure to obtain the re-seal probate prior to the issue of proceedings is no bar to the claim, so long as the re-sealing was effected by the time of the trial.

One can understand in human terms that a litigant may not like the prospect of a case being heard by a judge in front of whom they have failed on a previous occasion. But the system could not operate if that were recognised as a sufficient reason for requiring recusal.