Vexatious Litigant in UK Law

It is at the next stage that things will be different according to whether or not he has given leave under the section 42 order. If he gives leave, the respondent will be unable to attack the leave under section 42 because that is final, but he may be able to attack the leave under Order 53. At that stage the vexatious litigant, having obtained his leave under section 42, will be treated in all respects as if he were not subject to the order.

The new Act does not prevent Mr. Vernazza from continuing proceedings which it is proper for him to carry on. If the proceedings are not an abuse and he has primâ facie grounds for them, then he will be given leave to continue them. They are only exercising a control over their own procedure. No man, let alone a vexatious litigant, has a vested right to bring or continue proceedings which are an abuse of the process of the Court.

While I am unable to support the whole of the judge's reasoning, I am in no doubt that his decision was correct. 32, r.6 can only apply to an order made in proceedings in which the person seeking to have it set aside is either a party or entitled to be made one. The court could not accede to an application made by a person who had no locus standi to make it.

It appears from those observations that Davies LJ assumed that there could be no question of joining the proposed defendant. The Attorney General was in a different position because it was he who had brought the proceedings in which the applicant had been declared a vexatious litigant. It was he, and only he, who had the locus standi to appear on the application; see also the observations of Brooke J in Re C (The Times, 14th November 1989).

While I cannot agree with Sir John Wood that the observations made in the two Ewing cases are of more than persuasive authority in the decision of the question that now confronts us, they are certainly valuable as demonstrating an assumption that a defendant to proceedings for the institution of which leave has been given under section 42(3) cannot apply to set the leave aside.

As a general principle, if a judge of the High Court, to whom application is made by a vexatious litigant for permission to institute proceedings, grants that permission, the leave that is granted franks the proceedings. Every judgment at first instance now requires permission to appeal for the case to be taken further.

We do not include the word "habitual" among the necessary criteria for an extended civil restraint order, but there has to be an element of persistence in the irrational refusal to take "no" for an answer before an order of this type can be made.