Mr Leicester v Plumtree Farms Ltd

JurisdictionEngland & Wales
JudgeMR JUSTICE LLOYD
Judgment Date17 January 2003
Neutral Citation[2003] EWHC 206 (Ch)
CourtChancery Division
Date17 January 2003

[2003] EWHC 206 (Ch)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE CHANCERY DIVISION

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand

London WC2

B E F O R E:Mr Justice Lloyd

Mr Leicester
(APPELLANT)
and
Plumtree Farms Limited
(RESPONDENT)

THE CLAIMANT appeared in person

PLUMTREE FARMS LIMITED was not represented

Friday, 17 January 2003

MR JUSTICE LLOYD
1

This is an appeal by Mr Royston David Leicester against orders by District Judge Lay in the Brighton County Court, sitting in bankruptcy, made on 29 October 2002 and on 6 November 2002, the judgment being given on 6 November. The principal order was made on an application by Mr Leicester, issued on 22 July 2002, for the annulment of the bankruptcy order that had been made against him on 30 July 1997.

2

That application came on for hearing on 29 October and was heard by District Judge Lay. He reserved judgment. He heard Mr Leicester in person, accompanied by his wife. There were present the official receiver, Mr Navier, and the trustee in bankruptcy's solicitors. There was no representative for the petitioning creditor. Mr Leicester filed a statement by way of evidence in support of his application and a report was filed by the official receiver.

3

The hearing took some significant period of time, but at the end the district judge dismissed the application. In giving judgment on 6 November, he also dismissed a further application that Mr Leicester had made in the meantime, also an application for annulment, filed on 30 October. As it happens, although it is not the subject of appeal, there was a separate and subsequent application for annulment at the end of November, which was struck out on the order of His Honour Judge Kennedy, who is the designated civil judge in Brighton.

4

This case has quite a lengthy history. The bankruptcy order was made on the petition of a company called Plumtree Farms Limited, for a debt of just over £6,800. The petition was issued on 10 February 1997. Before that, Plumtree Farms Limited had served a statutory demand on Mr Leicester, which Mr Leicester had applied unsuccessfully to have set aside. The bankruptcy order was made at the end of July and there was an attempt to appeal the bankruptcy order and to have it reviewed.

5

Those applications were unsuccessful in the High Court. There was a further application for annulment in May 2000, which was dismissed on the basis that it really covered the same ground as the previous appeal and the review application. At the end of July 2000, three years having elapsed, Mr Leicester was discharged from bankruptcy. But, of course, the effect of the bankruptcy still persists and it is on that basis that he made his further application for annulment in July.

6

The circumstance of greatest importance, so far as I can see, for the purposes of the present proceedings, that preceded the bankruptcy, and indeed the statutory demand, occurred in 1996. There seems to have been a judgment obtained by a company called Everest Frozen Foods against Mr Leicester, who traded at the time under the trade name Real Bite Foods. The judgment was for just short of £10,000, and on 14 May 1996, a writ of fi. fa. was obtained, directed to the sheriff of East Sussex, with a view to enforcement of that judgment debt.

7

Mr Leicester says that the bailiffs executed, or purported to execute, judgment at his business premises in September 1996, and he says they did so without authority. He complains that, although there was at least one writ of fi. fa. which might possibly have justified execution because the judgment debt had not been paid, the execution was illegal because, he says, he has seen no copy of a writ of fi. fa. endorsed as to the manner and circumstances of execution. He is right to say that it is an obligation, apparent from the form of the writ, that when it is executed it should be endorsed.

8

He was supplied at an early date with the front page of the writ, but he says what matters is the back page of the writ, because that would be the page that would have been, or should have been, endorsed. He says he only obtained a copy of the back page of the writ in July last year, in the course of a hearing of proceedings between him and the official receiver.

9

Those were proceedings which arose from the fact that he had served a statutory demand on the official receiver claiming that the official receiver owed him a sum somewhat short of £1 million. The official receiver applied to have that set aside, and it was set aside. He appealed against the setting aside of the statutory demand, and, as I understand it, that appeal was unsuccessful. I also gather that Mr Leicester has issued other proceedings against the official receiver for the recovery of a more modest sum of just short of £150,000.

10

At all events, Mr Leicester, having obtained a copy of the back page of the writ of fi. fa., and having observed that it had no endorsement on it, took that as confirmation of the view that he had held for many years, that the execution was illegal, and that, accordingly, the bailiff and the undersheriff had no business having seized his goods at all, still less having held onto them.

11

So far as his knowledge of the position is concerned, in March 2000 Messrs. Berrymans Lace Mawer, who act for the undersheriff, wrote to him, sending him copies of the writs that they had on their files for his information, which included the fi. fa. writ issued at the request of Everest Frozen Foods and confirming the fact that the writ had not been endorsed to the effect that it had been executed. The letter explains that the return was not endorsed because Lane and Co, who I suppose were Everest's solicitors, had not requested an endorsed return, nor had they paid a fee in respect of it. So, it is clear that Mr Leicester has known the position, even if he had not then seen the back page of the writ, since the end of March 2000.

12

The execution —and I will call it execution, whether or not it was valid, and whether or not it was vitiated by the failure of an endorsement —the execution was, according to Mr Leicester, a complete disaster for him. He has told me that he was kept out of the premises for a month, that when he was able to get back into the premises, he found that all the moveable goods, including all the goods of his business and the records, had been taken away. Any cash that was there had been taken away and the fixtures and fittings had been vandalised and destroyed. He says that his vehicles were taken away and he was left with absolutely nothing with which he could have attempted to carry on or restart his business.

13

He says that there has been no accounting on behalf of the undersheriff for anything as a result of the execution and seizure of his goods and assets. If it be right that the execution was the execution of the Everest writ of fi. fa., then, of course, the undersheriff would have been bound to account to that creditor for the amount received, and any balance would, no doubt, have been payable to Mr Leicester.

14

Mr Leicester contends that the execution was illegal, it was a criminal act, and that the undersheriff, who he points out is an officer of the court, was acting criminally and illegally in effecting the execution and in refusing or failing to account for the proceeds.

15

The immediate effect, as I say, of...

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1 cases
  • Mark Emmanuel v The Commissioners for HM Revenue and Customs
    • United Kingdom
    • Chancery Division
    • 26 Mayo 2017
    ...wife a substantial debt, is neither here nor there, so far as the making of the bankruptcy order is concerned." per Lloyd J in Leicester v Plumtree Farms Limited [2003] EWHC 206 (Ch) 37 In Yang v. Official Receiver [2013] EWHC 3577 (Ch), HHJ Hodge QC (sitting as a Judge of the High Court), ......

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