Mohamed Hassan EL Haddad v Khulood Abdulla Hassan AL Rostamani
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Fancourt |
| Judgment Date | 01 March 2024 |
| Neutral Citation | [2024] EWHC 448 (Ch) |
| Court | Chancery Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: BL-2023-000283 |
[2024] EWHC 448 (Ch)
Mr Justice Fancourt
Case No: BL-2023-000283
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
BUSINESS AND PROPERTY COURTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES
BUSINESS LIST (ChD)
Royal Courts of Justice
The Rolls Building
Fetter Lane
LONDON
EC4A 1NL
Patrick Lawrence KC (instructed by RPC) for the Ninth to Fourteenth Defendant
Ian Croxford KC and Jack Watson (instructed by Clyde & Co) for the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Defendant
Dr Mohamed Hassan El Haddad, Claimant, in person
Pre-reading days: 12, 15 January 2024
Hearing dates: 16, 17, 18 January 2024
Draft judgment circulated: 23 February 2024
Approved Judgment
This judgment was handed down via remotely at 10.00 am on 1 March 2024 by circulation to the parties or their representatives and by release to the National Archives.
Introduction
The Claimant, Dr Mohamed El Haddad (“Dr Haddad”), issued a claim form on 23 February 2023 seeking to set aside the judgment given against him in this court on 7 July 2021 ( [2021] EWHC 1892 (Ch)) (“the 2021 Judgment”) on the ground that it was procured by the fraud of all eighteen defendants to this claim. By the order subsequently made on 8 November 2021, leave to serve that claim on the First to Eighth Defendants (who were defendants to that claim) out of the jurisdiction was set aside and the Court declared that it had no jurisdiction to try it.
I will refer to that previous claim as “the Partnership Claim”. It was a claim to dissolve an alleged 50/50 partnership between Dr Haddad and the First Defendant (“Ms Khulood”) and administer its assets, some of which were allegedly vested in the Second to Seventh Defendants. The Eighth Defendant was Ms Khulood's Dubai lawyer.
The Ninth to Fourteenth Defendants to this claim are the lawyers who were acting for the First to Seventh Defendants in the Partnership Claim; the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Defendants are the lawyers who were acting for the Eighth Defendant. I refer to them collectively as “the Lawyer Defendants”.
The claim form in this action was served on the Lawyer Defendants within the jurisdiction. Dr Haddad's application for leave to serve it out of the jurisdiction on the First to Eighth Defendants has been adjourned to await the outcome of the applications that are before me, namely applications issued on 8 September 2023 by:
i) the Ninth to Fourteenth Defendants to strike out the claim form and particulars of claim, pursuant to CPR rule 3.4(2), and
ii) the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Defendants to strike out the claim form and particulars of claim pursuant to rule 3.4(2) and/or for reverse summary judgment, pursuant to CPR rule 24.2
(“the Applications”).
I will return to the current claim form and particulars of claim later, but first it is necessary to explain in more detail the circumstances in which the claim has been issued.
Background to the claim
Leave to serve the Partnership Claim in the United Arab Emirates (“UAE”) on the First to Eighth Defendants was set aside by Zacaroli J on two distinct grounds, namely that Dr Haddad:
i) could establish no serious issue to be tried about the existence of the alleged partnership with the First Defendant because (and only because) of an issue estoppel arising from decisions of the UAE courts in Dubai, which had decided that Dr Haddad failed to prove the existence of such an agreement;
ii) had deliberately not disclosed to the court, when seeking leave to serve out, the fact that the Ninth Defendants, acting on behalf of the First to Seventh Defendants, had written a response to his letter before claim explaining why he was precluded by res judicata and issue estoppel from bringing his claim in England.
As a result of ground (i) above, this court declined to hear his claim. The Judge indicated that, had he not refused jurisdiction on ground (i), he would have set aside service out on ground (ii) and left Dr Haddad to re-apply for leave to serve out.
To say that Dr Haddad was aggrieved by the judgment would be a considerable understatement. He first applied to Zacaroli J to recuse himself from hearing his application for permission to appeal, and when this was inevitably refused he advanced 66 grounds of appeal, which included that the judgment was obtained by fraud of the defendants' expert witness of UAE law, Mr Aidarous, and that the Judge was apparently biased. Permission to appeal was refused.
Dr Haddad then applied to the Court of Appeal for permission to prepare a skeleton argument estimated to require 139 pages to address 111 alleged errors of fact or law in the judgment (62 of which related to the issue estoppel issue), one allegation that the judgment was obtained by fraud and six allegations of misleading the court, and allegations of breach of natural justice and fairness and lack of independence on the part of the tribunal. (Dr Haddad was represented before Zacaroli J by Andrew Ayres QC but prepared the intended appeal himself and then persuaded junior counsel, Mr Baki, to lend his name to the skeleton argument.) At the same time, Dr Haddad applied to the Court of Appeal for permission to adduce a bundle of about 1350 pages instead of the permitted 350 pages in support of his application for permission to appeal.
The Court of Appeal refused permission for a longer skeleton argument and larger appeal bundle, but Dr Haddad took no notice. He filed a skeleton argument running to 81 pages, his extensive appeal bundle, and an application to rely on new evidence, including a new, further expert report from his UAE law expert, Dr Khrais. The skeleton argument addressed (in the event) 57 grounds of appeal that were pursued, which focused mainly on the issue estoppel argument, contending (essentially, but in multifarious different formulations) that the Judge had erred in concluding that the existence of an English partnership with Ms Khulood had been the subject of consideration or decision in the UAE cases. The skeleton also contained grounds:
i) that, on the basis of the new evidence of Dr Khrais, that the expert evidence of Mr Aidarous had deceived the Court;
ii) that the solicitors acting for the defendants to the Partnership Claim and their leading and junior counsel had dishonestly misled the court, and so the judgment was obtained by fraud; and
iii) further, that the judgment was in breach of the rules of natural justice and of Article 6 of the ECHR.
The bias allegation was dropped at that stage.
It is notable, therefore, that the application for permission to appeal the 2021 Judgment included allegations of fraud by the Lawyer Defendants at that stage.
Males LJ refused permission to appeal, principally on the basis of the serious failure by Dr Haddad to give full and frank disclosure, and so dismissed the application for permission to rely on new evidence. In his reasons, he explained that it would be wrong to leave the matter there, and commented that the skeleton argument was incoherent and that it was hard to see that there was any proper basis for allegations of dishonesty on the part of Mr Aidarous, solicitors or counsel. His Lordship therefore directed a hearing to explore with Mr Baki of Counsel whether there was any proper basis for the allegations of dishonesty that he had pleaded.
At that hearing, Mr Baki disavowed the allegations of dishonesty and apologised for lending his name to allegations that he was not able to justify, though he made clear that Dr Haddad would continue to pursue the matter of dishonesty elsewhere. Males LJ dismissed the applications for permission to appeal, and for permission to appeal his order for costs, as being totally without merit. This obviously included the attempt to appeal on the basis that the Court had been deceived by the Lawyer Defendants and wrong about the issue estoppel.
Undeterred by that setback, Dr Haddad personally wrote a letter before claim on 20 January 2023 to all eighteen Defendants. The letter was characteristically long and repetitive, running to 163 closely-typed pages and 903 paragraphs.
Equally characteristically, Dr Haddad pulled no punches in what he said. He accused:
i) the solicitors representing the First to Eighth Defendants of intentionally misleading the court with 14 dishonest strategies in preparing the evidence on which they relied;
ii) Mr Aidarous of 5 dishonest strategies relating to his expert evidence;
iii) Counsel instructed on behalf of the First to Eighth Defendants of knowingly misleading the court with nine dishonest strategies relating to the hearing before Zacaroli J;
iv) Counsel instructed by the First to Seventh Defendants of 2 dishonest strategies in their skeleton argument, which was adopted by counsel for the Eighth Defendant;
v) All Counsel of knowingly misleading the court by the list of issues that they agreed, and 19 dishonest strategies at the hearing, as well as a further 9 dishonest strategies to mislead the court in responding to the application for permission to appeal.
A further 14 dishonest strategies were also alleged, though it is difficult to say whether these were distinct from those previously alleged.
All of the solicitors and barristers concerned were alleged to have been complicit in others' dishonesty: in other words, they conspired together, to some extent (though at the hearing before me, Dr Haddad...
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