Morris v Bank of America National Trust
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 21 December 1999 |
| Date | 21 December 1999 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
COURT OF APPEAL.
Before Lord Justice Morritt, Lord Justice Brooke and Lord Justice Sedley.
Practice - pleadings can exceptionally quote evidence
In an exceptional case, pleadings might need to contain not just references to or summaries of documentary evidence but extensive quotations from it in order to identify with sufficient precision the primary facts from which relevant inferences were to be drawn.
The cases where the precise wording of the document would be relevant were not limited to defamation and misrepresentation and could include a case where it was alleged that persons had knowingly been party to fraudulent trading by a company.
On an interlocutory application to strike out pleadings, even where the primary facts were not in dispute, only the inferences to be drawn from them, the court should not normally embark on a protracted examination of the evidence to determine whether a cause of action could be made out, unless it could be shown that such an application was clearly likely to succeed and would obviate the need for a full trial.
The Court of Appeal so held when dismissing an appeal by the defendants, Bank of America National Trust and two associated companies, from the refusal of Mr Justice Lloyd on October 23, 1998, to hear their application to strike out claims in an action brought against them by the plaintiffs, Christopher Morris and other liquidators of the collapsed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
The defendants were alleged by the liquidators to have been knowingly party to fraudulent trading by BCCI. The plaintiffs sought to recover US$6 billion under section 213 of the Insolvency Act 1986.
The defendants contended that the plaintiffs' points of claim, which ran to 228 paragraphs extending over 150 pages, failed to disclose any reasonable cause of action, were scandalous, frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of the process of the court, contrary to Order 18, rule 19 of the Rules of the Supreme Court. Alternatively, they sought to strike out 191 specified paragraphs for failure to comply with Order 18, rule 7.
They contended that the judge was wrong in refusing to entertain their striking-out application on the merits in the form of a mini-trial in accordance with the approach recommended by the House of Lords inWilliams and Humbert Ltd v W and H Trade Marks (Jersey) LtdELR ((1986) AC 368...
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Deutsche Bank AG and Others v Unitech Global Ltd and Another
...on interlocutory application when the full facts cannot be known." 91 This approach was applied and approved in Morris and others v Bank of America National Trust and others [2000] 1 All ER 954. 92 I have been provided with 140 pages of Skeleton Arguments, 5 bundles of evidence and 7 bundle......
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Three Rivers District Council v Governor and Company of the Bank of England (No. 3)
...exercise. But I would also pay careful regard to what the Court of Appeal in Wenlock v Moloney regarded as objectionable. In Morris v Bank of America National Trust [2000] 1 All ER 954, 966B Morritt LJ said that Wenlock's case illustrated a salutary principle. He then said at p 966B-C: "In......
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Bank of Credit and Commerce International SA ((in Liquidation)) (No. 15), Re; Bank of India v Morris
...concerning the collapse of BCCI: see Re BCCI, Banque Arabe v. Morris [2001] BCLC 263 at pp 269–273 and Morris v. Bank of America etc [2001] BCLC 771 at pp 782–783. Position of BoI 86 BoI accepted the possibility that section 213 could apply to a corporate counterparty, such as BoI, but cont......
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The use of technology in the courts
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