Becker v Teale (Practice Note)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE DAVIES,LORD JUSTICE EDMUND DAVIES,LORD JUSTICE STEPHENSON |
| Judgment Date | 26 May 1971 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1971] EWCA Civ J0526-7 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 26 May 1971 |
[1971] EWCA Civ J0526-7
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
(Civil Division)
(From: His Honour Judge Olson — Mayor's and City of London Court)
Lord Justice Davies
Lord Justice Edmund Davies and
Lord Justice Stephenson
The APPELLANT (Mrs. D. Becker, Plaintiff) appeared in person.
Mr. JULIAN SANDYS (instructed by Messrs. F. H. Carpenter & Oldham, Brighton) appeared on behalf of the Respondents (Defendants).
(without calling upon Counsel for the Respondents)
I will ask Lord Justice Edmund Davies to give the first judgment.
This is the plaintiff's appeal from the judgment of Deputy-Judge Olson sitting at the Mayor's and City of London Court on the 10th January, 1969. He then awarded the plaintiff £8 on her claim against the second of three defendants. He also awarded that same defendant £43 on his counterclaim, so that by set-off the result was that he recovered £35 damages, the plaintiff being ordered to pay seven-eighths of the costs of the proceedings.
It is, perhaps, too much to hope that this is the last that the courts will hear of the matter giving rise to these protracted and deplorable proceedings, even though the plaintiff has for some time been declared a vexatious litigant.
Let it be said at the outset that this is a hopeless appeal. Although in her Notice the appellant sought to introduce points of law, in reality this case begins and ends with questions of fact, as to which the opinion formed and the conclusions expressed by the trial judge are of the greatest possible importance.
The House of Lords decision in Onassis v. Vergottis (1968 2 Lloyd's Reports 403) is simply the most recent and possibly the most striking illustration of the difficulty in the way of an appellate court in disturbing findings which depend upon the credibility of witnesses called at the court of trial. In the last analysis, the outcome of the present case turned exactly on that consideration; for the judge, in emphatic terms, after hearing the proceedings for two long and weary days — as they must have been — expressed his acceptance of the testimony of the first and the third defendants — who were key witnesses — in preference to that of the plaintiff. It is in the light of these crucialfindings that this Court has to evaluate the appellant's complaint that the judge totally omitted those points which, as she put it, were in her favour.
Mrs. Becker has sought to introduce fresh evidence; but it had to be refused, because she did not really begin to establish grounds whereby this Court, with its limited powers, could admit it. This appeal, therefore, has to be decided solely on the evidence which was called at the trial.
The action began in the Queen's Bench Division by a writ of the 22nd February, 1968. The endorsement on the writ was: "The plaintiff's claim as sole trustee for Elizabeth Dorothea Harriet Becker and John Edward Hugh Neill Becker is for the return of all property removed by the defendants from Atherton, Jarvis Lane, Steyning, between February 3rd and 10th, 1968, and unlawfully held by the defendants at some place unknown, and/or the full value of the said property, and damages for all loss and damage to the property and occasioned by its detention, written demands for its return having been ignored by the defendants, and for the full value and damages for any of the property dispersed, and for the plaintiff's personal property and/or its full value".
The basis of the matter was that during 1967 the second defendant, a Mr. John Teale, had let (as he asserted and as was accepted by the court which had to hear proceedings for possession) to the plaintiff herself a tenancy of the premises "Atherton", Jarvis Lane, Steyning, to which I have already referred. There was one payment of rent in respect of those premises. Thereafter, by possession proceedings (the basis of which is quite immaterial) the second defendant obtained, on the 13th December, an order for possession to be delivered up on the 20th.
On the 17th January the County Court judge, Judge Harold Brown, refused suspension of the order; and on the 23rd January the first defendant, acting for her son, the second defendant,who was in South Africa, took possession.
On the 22nd February, 1968, the writ (to which reference has already been made) was issued. But exactly a week before that, the first defendant had gone out to South Africa, where she joined her son for a period of some weeks or months.
By the Statement of Claim the plaintiff, having set out the alleged letting to herself and to another as trustees, said that she instituted proceedings in the High Court by way of originating summons in relation to the tenancy, and said that, despite the originating summons, possession was taken on the 23rd January, 1968, and that thereafter there was the removal of the entire contents of the house, including clothes and personal papers. She said that the whereabouts of the property were unknown to her; and that the defendants had ignored all demands, made orally and in writing, to restore the property to her. She therefore sued for "restitution, recompense and damages".
A massive amount of detail has been imported into this case by the appellant, who obviously takes the attitude that these courts exist largely (if not entirely) for the sole purpose of dealing with her interminable and numerous litigatory activities. I do not propose to take any more time than is necessary in dealing with the matter. Broadly, it amounts to this. There came the stage when, quite naturally, the plaintiff not having given up vacant possession of the house at the date she had been ordered to give it, the first defendant, Mrs. Teale, was in a dilemma. What was she to do? The plaintiff was taking no steps to remove the contents of the house at all. Were they to remain there indefinitely, so that the owner of the premises (the second defendant) would for a quite unascertained period of time be deprived of the power of letting them? In January the property was infect removed, on the instructions of the first defendant, to the storerooms of the third defendant.
The first defendant was admittedly in error in refusing to tell the plaintiff where her property was on being asked. The judge said that that was a wrong thing to do; and he reflected that in his judgment. But this case turns upon far more than that initial wrongful refusal. The main question is as to what property was taken, where it was put, and whether it remained in storage until it was eventually taken away by the appellant in December, 1968. The...
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Jones v Vans Colina
...for leave to institute proceedings the proposed defendant is neither a party to the application nor is he entitled to be made one. 19 In Becker v. Teale [1971] 1 WLR 1475, another case in which Mrs Dorothy Becker had been given leave to institute proceedings, Davies LJ said, at p.1476: "It ......
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Re Terence Patrick Ewingthe Claimant Appeared in Person
...leave to institute proceedings the proposed defendant is neither a party to the application nor is he entitled to be made one. In Becker v Teale (Practice Note) [1971] 1 W.L.R. 1475, another case in which Mrs. Dorothy Becker had been given leave to institute proceedings, Davies L.J said, at......
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Winch v Jones
...to which Lord Simon referred in his speech. Such leave is to be granted sparingly, there being a high onus cast upon the litigant (see Becker v. Teale [1971] 1 W.L.R. 1475). 25 In my judgment none of these approaches is directly applicable to the jurisdiction under section 139. The vexatiou......
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Ewing (Terence Patrick) v News International Ltd & others
...or continue proceedings [under s. 42(3)] should be granted sparingly and very carefully”. This echoes a passage in Becker v Teale [1971] 1 WLR 1475 where Davies LJ said; “In my view, the jurisdiction which is given by that section to a judge in chambers to give leave for the institution or ......