Cecile Aimee Roberts v Rudy Peter Roberts
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE THORPE |
| Judgment Date | 27 October 2003 |
| Neutral Citation | [2003] EWCA Civ 1831 |
| Docket Number | B1/2003/1923; B1/2003/1923(A) |
| Date | 27 October 2003 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
[2003] EWCA Civ 1831
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM WANDSWORTH COUNTY COURT
(DISTRICT JUDGE KNOWLES)
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London, WCA 2LL
Lord Justice Thorpe
B1/2003/1923; B1/2003/1923(A)
The Appellant appeared in person
The DEfendant did not attend and was not represented
(Approved by the Court)
Monday, 27 October 2003
This is Mr Robert's renewed application for permission to appeal the judgment of District Judge Knowles of 12 August 2003 dismissing his appeal from the judgment of District Judge Gittens given on 7 January 2003. These proceedings have been in the Wandsworth County Court. The application for permission was put before me on paper on 7 October. I provisionally refused, saying:
"This application is caught by section 55 of the Access to Justice Act 1999. There has been an unsuccessful appeal below. No important point of principle is demonstrated nor any other compelling reason. The skeleton argument raises only disputed points of fact and valuation of property."
Mr Roberts has done his best in taking advantage of his right to an oral hearing to persuade me to change my mind. He has put in an alternative appeal bundle received by the office on 24 October and it is an admirable bundle, very clearly put together, very carefully indexed and containing a number of documents which were not in his original bundle. But nothing in the new material shifts the fundamental obstruction created by section 55 of the Access to Justice Act. I feel very sorry for Mr Roberts, who has undoubtedly a sincere sense of injustice at the outcome of these proceedings. However, my task is strictly confined by the statutory reform designed to limit the citizen's right of appeal to one full investigation of the merits. There is no entitlement to a further merit review after that, unless something can be demonstrated in the nature of an important point of principle or some other compelling reason.
What went wrong from the point of view of Mr Roberts was that in the interlocutory stages the court made an effort to secure a...
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