Set Aside Judgment in UK Law

One is that where the judgment was obtained regularly there must be an affidavit of merits, meaning that the applicant must produce to the Court evidence that he has a prima facie defence. The principle obviously is that unless and until the Court has pronounced a judgment upon the merits or by consent, it is to have the power to revoke the expression of its coercive power where that has only been obtained by a failure to follow any of the rules of procedure.

But it is submitted for the bank that the language of section 9(2)( d) must be construed as qualified by the common law rule that the unsuccessful party who has been sued to judgment is not permitted to challenge that judgment on the ground that it was obtained by fraud unless he is able to prove that fraud by fresh evidence which was not available to him and could not have been discovered with reasonable diligence before the judgment was delivered.

In our opinion, therefore, to arrive at a reasoned assessment of the justice of the case the court must form a provisional view of the probable outcome if the judgment were to be set aside and the defence developed. The "arguable" defence must carry some degree of conviction.

It has long been the settled practice of the Court that the proper method of impeaching a completed judgment on the ground of fraud is by action in which, as in any other action based on fraud, the particulars of the fraud must be exactly given and the allegation established by the strict proof such a charge requires.

The first questions that arise, however, in dealing with an application to set aside a judgment under CPR Part 13.3 are the express requirements of that rule, namely whether the defendant has a real prospect of successfully defending the claim or whether there is some other reason why the judgment should be set aside, taking into account whether the person seeking to set aside the judgment made an application to do so promptly.

In any other case, the court has a discretion under rule 13.3(1) to set the judgment aside or vary it. That is the obverse of the relevant part of rule 24.2 and may apply whenever the defendant received the claim form and particulars of claim.

That is to adopt too dogmatic an approach to what should in my opinion be a broad, merits-based judgment which takes account of the public and private interests involved and also takes account of all the facts of the case, focusing attention on the crucial question whether, in all the circumstances, a party is misusing or abusing the process of the court by seeking to raise before it the issue which could have been raised before.