Forbes v Smith
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 21 November 1998 |
| Date | 21 November 1998 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
Chancery Division
Before Mr Justice Jacob
Practice - judgment in chambers - normally to be regarded as public document
With very rare exceptions, and even when a hearing had been in camera, no judgment could be regarded as a secret document.
Mr Justice Jacob so held in the Chancery Division, sitting in chambers in the Birmingham District Registry, in allowing an appeal by the defendants, Colin Leslie Smith and Eileen Theresa Sales, against the refusal of District Judge Savage to grant them leave to circulate widely a copy of a judgment delivered by Mr Justice Chadwick, sitting in chambers on September 9, 1997 at the express request of the defendants, whereby he had (i) struck out proceedings instituted against them by the plaintiff, James Forsyth Forbes, on the ground that they were an abuse of process, and (ii) responded negatively to a query by the defendants' solicitor whether that judgment could be reported.
Mr James Corbett for the defendants; the plaintiff in person.
MR JUSTICE JACOB said that a chambers hearing was in private, in the sense that members of the public had no right of admission: but in the case of an appeal from a judgment in chambers, no leave was required for it to be read out to the Court of Appeal in open court.
The concept of "a secret judgment" was inherently abhorrent. Only when there was a cause for secrecy, as in a trade secrets action, could it in general be right to regard a judgment as secret.
It was stated in Halsbury's Laws (volume 37 (1982) paragraph 345) to be derived from section 12(2) of the Administration of Justice Act 1960 that "Proceedings in chambers are held in private, but the publication of the whole or part of an order made in chambers is not itself a contempt of court unless the court, having power to do so, expressly prohibits its publication."
In Alliance Perpetual Building Society v Belrum InvestmentsWLR([1957] 1 WLR 720, 724) Mr Justice Harman had said: "The gravamen of the charge made is that (the newspaper article in question) is an account of matters proceeding in chambers. In my judgment, if this charge be true, a contempt of court has been committed. Interlocutory matters before the master proceed in private; the public has no right to attend them, nor has anybody…any right to give any account of them while the action is pending and has not been adjourned into court…authority for this proposition…is assumed in a speech...
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...a judgment (whether in whole or in part) merely because it was given or handed down in private (in chambers) and not in open court: Forbes v Smith [1998] 1 All ER 973 and Hodgson and Others v Imperial Tobacco Ltd and Others [1998] 1 WLR 1056. Exactly the same principle applies in the Family......
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