Michael J Murphy v Metric Components Basingstoke and Dean Borough Council
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE WAITE,LORD JUSTICE SAVILLE |
| Judgment Date | 28 July 1994 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1994] EWCA Civ J0728-3 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 28 July 1994 |
[1994] EWCA Civ J0728-3
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE BASINGSTOKE COUNTY COURT
(His Honour Judge Shawcross)
Before: Lord Justice Waite and Lord Justice Saville
The Applicant appeared in person.
MR. J. SMALL (instructed by Messrs Memery Crystal, London WC1B) appeared on behalf of the First Respondent.
No other party was represented.
)
Thursday 28th July 1994.
This is an application for a stay of an order that was made by way of interim relief in interpleader proceedings. A local authority found, upon resuming possession of premises which they had formerly let to a commercial tenant, that they contained a stock of computer monitors and printers. The title to those goods is contested between the former tenant, which is a company, and the applicant who claims to be a creditor of the company. He asserts that title to the goods in question had passed to him by antecedent agreement with the company. The arrangement is one that the company denies. The Local Authority landlord asserts no interest in the goods for itself and so it came about that the interpleader proceedings were issued.
They came on for hearing at the Basingstoke County Court before Judge Shawcross on 12th July 1994. The applicant attended in person. Counsel attended on behalf of the Local Authority as plaintiff in the interpleader proceedings and on behalf of the company, Metric Components plc. An initial difficulty encountered at the outset of the hearing was that Mr. Murphy, the applicant, sought to put in a very long affidavit with numerous exhibits. That evidence ought, under the rules and directions of the County Court, to have been lodged at a very much earlier stage. It seemed that an adjournment would be inevitable. Nevertheless, the Judge was able to hit upon this solution, which in due course was incorporated in a formal order. He directed that the interpleader summons should be adjourned to a date to be fixed after the conclusion of proceedings between the two respondents, Mr. Murphy and the company, to establish ownership of the monitors. He directed that the disputed goods should in the meantime be released to the company to enable them to be sold on terms that the proceeds of sale should be paid into a special trust account pending the final outcome of the proceedings.
Reference had been made at the hearing to the fact that a third party, a company called Bright Green Ideas Limited, had, on 30th April 1994, placed an order for 160 monitors at a total consideration in the region of £22,000. The Judge was told on behalf of Metric Components at the hearing that this order was still outstanding. Indeed, Bright Green Ideas Limited had instructed a solicitor to press for the goods to be supplied. So it appeared that there was the imminent possibility of a buyer being found for the goods, and no doubt it was this possibility which supplied the Judge with the necessary support for the direction he made for the interim sale of the goods so that the parties would be left to pursue their dispute simply in relation to the cash proceeds of sale.
Another matter which was drawn to the Judge's attention at the hearing was that the claimant company appeared to be in some financial difficulty. Statutory demands had been presented by a creditor, or creditors. Clearly something would have to be done to cover the possibility that the company might go into imminent liquidation. So the formula hit upon by the Judge was that the order should be conditional upon the statutory demands then outstanding against the company being satisfied or an injunction being granted in restraint of advertisement of any petition to wind up the company that might be founded upon those demands. In the event, such an injunction has now been very recently granted, so that condition has been duly satisfied.
The Judge also catered for the need to ensure that the goods were sold at a proper value by specifying in his order that the price to be paid for them should be no less than the price specified in the order from Bright Green Ideas Limited.
In the course of the hearing Mr. Murphy, the applicant, had protested to the Judge that the price that had been quoted to Bright Green Ideas by the company was a great deal too low. He offered to put that assertion to the test by saying to the court:
"Let me buy the goods myself."
The Judge was hesitant about acceding to that suggestion and in the end decided against it because he feared that problems of title might arise if it was the case that Bright Green Ideas Limited already had a contractual right to buy the monitors. He did not want to see his court being embroiled in some possible claim that any sale directed by the Basingstoke County Court had involved the inducement of a breach of contract.
The order, as I have said, was made on 12th July 1994. The applicant now proposes to appeal against it. If he persists in that intention he may face a procedural issue of some technicality and possible difficulty. Does he need leave to appeal? One view is that he does because the order made by the Judge was very much of an interim character. A classic, one might almost say, of interlocutory relief and, therefore, requiring leave.
On the other hand, there is an argument to which
Mr. Murphy helpfully drew our attention this afternoon on the lines that although Ord 59 r 1(A) sub-rule 6 sub-rule (i) purports to include, in the category of interlocutory relief, an order granting relief by way of interpleader, that is expressly made subject to Ord 58 r 7 which deals specifically with orders made on appeals from orders in interpleader proceedings and has led the editors of the Supreme Court Practice to state at Note 59/1/A/17 that the effect of sub-rule 1(A) (6) (i), combined with order Ord 58 r 7, is that all orders made in interpleader proceedings are interlocutory, but leave to appeal is only required where the interpleader proceedings were summarily determined under Ord 17 r 5. For my part I do not regard it as necessary to decide this procedural question. It does not matter very much, for present purposes, whether Mr. Murphy is before the court as a prospective appellant or as a prospective applicant for leave to appeal. In either capacity he is entitled to have his application dealt with on the merits and that is the basis upon which we have heard him this afternoon.
The nature of the claim which he came here to press, after giving notice to the Company of his intention to do so, as a result of which the Company has been represented before us today by Mr. Small, was a claim for a stay of execution of the Judge's order. What Mr. Murphy hoped to achieve by a stay was that the monitors would remain in the possession of the Local Authority landlord for the time being upon his, Mr. Murphy's, undertaking to be responsible for the storage and insurance costs so that the landlords would not be out of pocket. Being a businessman, and a realist, Mr. Murphy was ready to acknowledge that relief in that form has been overtaken by events. For, in the interval between the date of the Judge's order and today, the monitors, or virtually the whole of them, have been sold to Bright Green Ideas...
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