Hannah Susan Peasegood (Applicant (Plaintiff) v John William Hayes and Others and Another (Respondents
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE O'CONNOR,LORD JUSTICE BINGHAM,LORD JUSTICE STUART-SMITH |
| Judgment Date | 29 July 1988 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1988] EWCA Civ J0729-16 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 29 July 1988 |
| Docket Number | 88/0703a |
[1988] EWCA Civ J0729-16
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
CROWN OFFICE LIST
SCHIEMANN J.
Royal Courts of Justice
Lord Justice O'Connor
Lord Justice Bingham
and
Lord Justice Stuart-Smith
88/0703a
and
THE APPLICANT (Plaintiff) appeared in person.
MR. A. STEINFELD Q.C. and MISS C. NEWMAN (instructed by Messrs Herbert Smith & Co.) appeared on behalf of the Respondents (Defendants).
MR. P. ROTH (instructed by Messrs Goulden)appeared on behalf of the Respondent (Third Party).
MR. D. MATHESON (instructed by Messrs Collyer-Bristow) appeared on behalf of the Legal Aid Administration.
This is an application by the plaintiff for leave to appeal against the decision of Schiemann J. ordering that the proceedings against ten named defendants be struck out under Order 18, rule 19, on the grounds that the proceedings were vexatious and an abuse of the process of the court. The application has been heard by the full court inter partes. Schiemann J. gave a full judgment in which he set out the relief claimed, examined the law and explained in detail why he had come to the conclusion that he should make the order striking out the proceedings. A shorthand note of the proceedings is available. I exhibit it to my judgment and say that it should be read here.
The plaintiff recognised that the decision of the learned judge could not be faulted on the material before him. Thus it was that she presented to this court a notice of appeal in the form of an affidavit exhibiting further material, together with a second affidavit in which she makes various allegations against the defendants. Suffice to say that the application which she started on 13th April alleged against the ten defendants (who are all officers in the administration of the Law Society and/or the Legal Aid Fund) that they had conspired to conceal illegal conduct, that they had been guilty of fraud, that they had connived at illegality, that they had perverted the course of justice, that they had obtained pecuniary advantage by deception, that they had been cheating the public, destroying records, falsely deceiving the Lord Chancellor, the Attorney General, the Master of the Rolls, Members of Parliament, the Fraud Squad, and I know not whom, that they had been guilty of all these matters.
Schiemann J. very properly, drew her attention to section 50 of the Solicitors Act, which preserves the old jurisdiction of the court over solicitors of the court. Section 51 provides:
"(1) Where an application to strike the name of a solicitor off the roll or to require a solicitor to answer allegations contained in an affidavit is made to the High Court, then,…the following provisions of this section shall have effect…
"(2) The court shall not entertain the application except on production of an affidavit proving that the applicant has served on the Society"—
that is the Law Society—
"fourteen clear days' notice of his intention to make the application, together with copies of all affidavits intended to be used in support of the application."
One only has to read those two sections together to see that, if somebody moves the court and asks the court to order that a solicitor shall answer allegations contained in the affidavit, the whole purpose of the proceedings being to have him struck off the roll, it is plain that the solicitor must be able to understand what the allegations are. In the affidavit which accompanied the originating motion of 13th April the plaintiff in a whole series of paragraphs made all sorts of allegations. She was asked by the learned judge to direct him to what it would be that each of these individual defendants would find that he or she had to answer. The judge himself gave the answer that they would find no means of discovering which of these large selection of crimes it was suggested that they individually had been guilty of. For that reason he came to the conclusion, as in my judgment he was bound to do, that these proceedings were vexatious and an abuse of the process of the court.
Having presented further material, Mr. Steinfeld for the defendants drew our attention to the section to which I have just referred, section 51(2), and said that the present affidavits with the supporting documents, sworn on 21st July, did not meet the requirements and, therefore, we should not entertain any further material.
Where somebody's case has been struck out because of a failure to put in material which might exist, it is customary for the court to give an opportunity to the plaintiff to show that there may be something which amendment might cure. The learned judge in the matter before him, for reasons which in my judgment were absolutely right, refused an adjournment to the plaintiff in order for her to put in further material. The reason for that was that if somebody launches proceedings making very serious charges of grave criminal offences against ten apparently responsible and reputable people, such a plaintiff must at least put some material before the court to justify wild allegations of criminal activity. It is no good launching such proceedings and then, when it is found that there is no base for them whatever, to say "Please may I have more time to go away and think of something else".
However, the plaintiff in fact sought to add further material in the affidavit which she put before this court. We have looked at it. So that she may be under no misapprehension, everything which she has wanted to put before the court has been put before the court. Having considered that material, we went through the same exercise. We invited her to do exactly as the judge had invited her to do, namely to point in the new material to anything on which any one of these ten defendants could fasten and say "Now that is the crime that I am being charged with, and it is right that the court should make me give some answer to it". The result, I fear, is exactly the same as it was before the judge. From none of the material is it possible to spell out what is being said against these individuals. It is sufficient to take one as an example, and it was the first one that we took at random from the ten defendants.
The sixth defendant was the Area Director of the No. 12 Legal Aid Area based in Chester. The seventh and eighth defendants are assistant directors in the same area. In paragraphs 16, 17 and 18 of her affidavit which she has produced (and which we have looked at without formally admitting it in evidence) the applicant makes allegations against those three persons. They can be summarised in this way. The plaintiff was married to a solicitor. Her marriage broke down and matrimonial proceedings took place. In those proceedings, which became, quite obviously, extremely...
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