Edward William Ellis v Ministry of Justice
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Moylan,Lord Justice Davis |
| Judgment Date | 12 June 2018 |
| Neutral Citation | [2018] EWCA Civ 2686 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | Case No: A2/2018/0538 & 0605 |
| Date | 12 June 2018 |
[2018] EWCA Civ 2686
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
MRS JUSTICE MAY
HQ16X00733
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Davis
and
Lord Justice Moylan
Case No: A2/2018/0538 & 0605
The Appellant appeared in person
Mr A Eardley (instructed by The Government Legal Department) on behalf of the Respondent
Hearing date : 12 June 2018
Introduction
Mr Ellis, the Appellant in this case, appeals from the suspended committal order made by May J on 22 February 2018 for breaches of an order made on 8 March 2016. The latter order restrained Mr Ellis from “issuing claims on behalf of others or from assisting others to bring claims in contravention of the Legal Services Act 2007.” Mr Ellis also applies for permission to appeal from the general civil restraint order made by May J on 22 February 2018.
The Applicant below, and the Respondent to this appeal, is the Ministry of Justice represented by Mr Eardley. Mr Ellis has, throughout, appeared in person. He confirmed at the outset of this hearing that he did not want legal representation.
At the beginning of the hearing, and at times during the course of his submissions, Mr Ellis raised some procedural points including in respect of the bundles prepared for this hearing and of what took place at the hearing before Turner J on 6th November 2017. We are satisfied that there has been no procedural unfairness to Mr Ellis. He was fully aware, both before May J and at the hearing before us, of the case he has had to meet. Indeed, it is our assessment that the points he raised go towards and in support of his overarching case as to fraud and corruption which I come to later.
Background
Mr Ellis is a former solicitor. He was suspended from practice indefinitely in 2006 and struck off in 2013. His appeal against being struck off was dismissed in February 2015. On 8 March 2016 Senior Master Fontaine made the following order:
“ UPON it being brought to the attention of the court that.
(1) Mr Edward William Ellis, not being an authorised person entitled to carry on a reserved legal activity or a legal activity under the Legal Services Act 2007, has issued claim forms and applications in the above and other proceedings on behalf of others and
(2) The claim forms issued by Mr Edward William Ellis and the particulars of the claim therein have been declared to constitute an abuse of process and a number of claims have also been found to be wholly devoid of merit.
It is ordered that:
1. Mr Edward William Ellis is restrained from issuing claims on behalf of others or from assisting others to bring claims in contravention of the Legal Services Act 2007.”
The “above … proceedings” referred to in the recital to the order were four claims brought by claimants against the Attorney General, against the Ministry of Justice (in three of those cases) and against varying numbers (between six and 36) of other defendants.
May J's judgment sets out more detail of the background. I quote:
“1. (Mr Ellis) has a fully formed and apparently internally consistent belief system focused on corruption. He believes that some —perhaps all —previous Prime Ministers, all judges and magistrates, the Government Legal Service and Ministry of Justice together with “State officers”, by which I took him to mean police and court staff, and probably all sorts of other people and institutions, are corrupt and that the decisions they make are, without exception, fraudulent; hence his destination of judicial decisions as “frauds”: for instance, an “evidence irrelevance fraud” when I refused to consider a sheaf of documents he handed up as being of no relevance to the issues I had to decide on this application, or a “jurisdiction fraud” when I determined that I did have jurisdiction to hear the application. The list goes on.
2. These beliefs would have just been sad had Mr Ellis not acted upon them or if his “philosophy” (his word) had not attracted adherents. But he has acted, unceasingly and vexatiously over many years, and persons with grievances against the justice system have been attracted and recruited. The result is that claim forms, application notices, appeals are issued and documents purportedly filed or served at various courts, bearing all the hallmarks of Mr Ellis's unmistakable drafting. These are prolix, tendentious, mostly incomprehensible screeds, making the same assertions of fraud and corruption again and again.
3. Consistent with his activity in drafting and promoting the issue of claims, Mr Ellis would also attend hearings in courts and tribunals with litigants to conduct cases on their behalf, using the occasions to repeat in oral representation the turgid, inchoate passages made in documentary form. Increasing and unwelcome familiarly with Mr Ellis in the Masters Office led Senior Master Fontaine to issue her order of 8 March 2016.”
Committal Application
On 9 August 2016 the Ministry of Justice issued an application for Mr Ellis' committal to prison for allegedly being in breach of the March 2016 order. On 6 November 2017 Turner J gave the Ministry of Justice permission to amend the application to include a schedule setting out 24 alleged acts of contempt. He also dismissed a number of oral applications made by Mr Ellis as being totally without merit, including applications for witness protection orders and for trial by jury.
Turner J made a representation order in favour of Mr Ellis, but Mr Ellis did not take advantage of this order informing May J, as he informed us, that he had decided not to instruct a legal representative.
The committal application was determined at a three day hearing concluding on 23 February 2018. At the outset Mr Ellis applied for May J to recuse herself. The basis of the application, as set out in the judge's short judgment on this issue, was that she had previously decided a case involving another litigant which concerned a road traffic accident and a no win and no fee agreement. May J rejected the application. She decided that her decision in that unrelated case provided no ground for recusing herself.
The judge proceeded to determine the applications. She had a considerable volume of evidence from the Ministry of Justice. She also heard evidence and submissions from Mr Ellis. The judge sets out some of the difficulties she encountered during the course of the hearing:
“7. One only has to read the transcripts of the hearings before Mr Justice Jay in 2016 and then before Mr Justice Turner in November 2017 to understand the difficulties in keeping Mr Ellis's oratory within any kind of reasonable parameters. There are constant references to a criminal conspiracy involving courts, court officers, judges at all levels, persons in Government, Government Legal Service, the Law Society and any number of others. The Crown, Lord Bishops and Cabinet are frequently mentioned, I think as some kind of corruption court. Once tuned into his language, it is possible to identify and link the beliefs giving rise to Mr Ellis's interminable ramblings but for the most part his lengthy perorations are utterly incomprehensible and very tedious.
8. The persistence of his delivery, combined with Mr Ellis's inability or refusal —it does not matter which —to focus and confine himself to the issues arising at this hearing, required me to impose a timetable as a way of keeping the case within reasonable bounds consistent with the overriding objective. As this was a committal hearing, with imprisonment of possible outcome if contempt were found, it was clearly appropriate to err on the generous side. I allowed Mr Ellis two hours to present his evidence, freestyle, after we had already had his answers given over two hours of questioning by Mr Eardley on the activities alleged to constitute breaches. During Mr Eardley's questions Mr Ellis continually diverted into his own preoccupations with corruption. I explained to Mr Ellis that if his freestyle presentation was relevant to the issues arising on this application. and remained so after the two hours was up, then I would be prepared to allow him more time; but if what he was saying was not relevant, then the time limit would stand. I am bound to say that nothing of what Mr Ellis relayed in his two hours was helpful to me in deciding whether or not he had acted in persistent breach of Master Fontaine's orders, but that was Mr Ellis's choice.
9. Mr Eardley thereafter addressed me on the law, as applied to the alleged breaches, taking about an hour and three-quarters to do so, after which I allowed Mr Ellis a further one and three-quarter hours to respond and address me further. His “response”, like his earlier...
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