Georgina Andrea Janneh (Petitioner) Baba Janneh (Respondent)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE ORR,MR. JUSTICE LATEY |
| Judgment Date | 03 December 1974 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1974] EWCA Civ J1203-4 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 03 December 1974 |
[1974] EWCA Civ J1203-4
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
(Civil Division)
(From: His Honour Judge Freeman - Ilford County Court)
(Revised)
Lord Justice Megaw
Lord Justice Orr and
Mr. Justice Latey
Mr. RICHARD HAYDEN (instructed by Messrs. Carter & Co., Barking) appeared on behalf of the Appellant (Husband, Respondent).
Mr. JAMES LEGON (instructed by Messrs. Gerald Black & Co.) appeared on behalf of the Respondent (Wife, Petitioner).
LORD JUSTICS MEGAW: This is an appeal by the husband, Mr. Baba Janneh, respondent in a divorce petition brought by his wife, Georgina Andrea Janneh, against an order made by Judge Freeman at the Ilford County Court on the 20th June of this year. By that order the learned judge refused the husband leave to file out of time an answer to the wife's petition, and to cross-petition out of time. At the hearing before the learned judge Mr. Janneh (whom I shall call the husband) appeared in person and presented his own case for leave being granted. In this Court we have had the advantage of having the husband represented by Mr. Hayden, who has put forward, if I may say so very clearly and helpfully, everything that can be said in support of the appeal.
The relevant facts are these. The parties were married in July, 1964. There are six children of the family. The wife at the time of the marriage had three children by a previous marriage; the husband had one child by a previous union; and there were born two children of the marriage itself. The relationship between husband and wife at some stage deteriorated. In 1975 it was in a very bad state. In November, 1975, the wife sought Legal Aid; and on the 21st November, 1973, she presented a petition of divorce, alleging unreasonable conduct. The petition contained a large number of particulars which alleged, amongst other things, violent acts by the husband against her and also against the children. At the same time as the petition was presented, the wife presented an application to the court for an injunction against her husband, and for an order that he should leave the matrimonial home, 161 Sterry Road, Dagenham. On the 28th November, 1973, Judge Freeman, before whom that application came, ordered the husband to leave the matrimonial home. There seems to be some doubt whether that order was made by consent or not. For purposes of the present appeal, I do not think that it matters one way or the other. The husband left the matrimonial home a few days later.
Meanwhile, on the 27th November, 1973, an acknowledgment of service of the petition had been filed on behalf of the husband and in that acknowledgment of service he had stated that he did not intend to defend the petition. The husband, it is said, accented at that stage that the marriage was at an end, and indeed still does so accept. However, according to an affidavit by the husband (leave to introduce which on this appeal was sought and for which we gave leave), he says that after he left the matrimonial home he discovered, largely if not entirely by conversations with the children when he saw them, that, immediately after he had left the matrimonial home on the order of the court, a man called Turner had moved in and had started to live there with the wife. The husband in his affidavit also alleges that he had heard from the children that the mother and Mr. Turner were treating the children badly, whether with physical assaults upon them or by other unkindnesses. The essence of the husband's grounds in this court for saying that he ought to be granted leave to file an answer out of time is that he himself has now decided, having thought natters over, that it would be entirely wrong that a decree should be given against him on the basis of acts of cruelty against the wife and the children, particularly when, according to what he says in his affidavit, the wife, immediately on the effective break-up of the marriage, allowed a lover to come in and to live with her and to treat the children in the way which I have mentioned, we gave leave also - necessarily, since the husband's affidavit was admitted - for an affidavit in answer from the wife to be read to us. It is sufficient to say that she in substance denies all the allegations made by the husband other than the fact that she is living with Mr. Turner. But she says that, so far from Mr. Turner having moved into the house in November, 1973, or shortly thereafter, she did not meet Mr. Turner for the first time until the 16th March, 1974, that the first sexual intercourse between them took place some two months later, which would beabout May, 1974, and that all the allegations in the husband's affidavit, said to have come from information from the children, as to Mr. Turner's having moved in earlier, and as to allegations of...
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