Onuegbu and Others v Okeke and Others
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Morris |
| Judgment Date | 11 October 2016 |
| Neutral Citation | [2016] EWHC 3500 (QB) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: IHQ/16/0545 |
| Date | 11 October 2016 |
[2016] EWHC 3500 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
The Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Morris
Case No: IHQ/16/0545
Mr D Giles (instructed by Augustine Clement) appeared on behalf of the Respondents
Mr M Jones (instructed by Cale Solicitors) appeared on behalf of the Applicants
(As Approved)
By application notice issued on 5 September 2016 the applicants, Benedict Okeke, Gladys Meke and Susan Ibezi, applied to this court for an order setting aside the order of District Judge Langley dated 21 April 2010, made in the Central London County Court Chancery List. I refer to this order as the April 2010 order.
By the April 2010 order the applicants, who were the first three defendants in proceedings in that court, were ordered to pay damages in the sum of £25,422.87 to the claimants in those proceedings. The first and third claimants in those proceedings Ogbudili Onuegbu and Wilson Onyeke are the respondents to this application. For ease of reference, and since all matters essentially refer to the original county court proceedings, for the purposes of this judgment I refer to the applicants as the defendants and to the respondents as the claimants, whilst at the same time recognising that certain other individuals were also claimants and defendants in the original proceedings.
The background to this application and the county court proceedings is a long-running dispute between various members of the Nnewi community of people originating from that area of Nigeria. A schism arose within the Nnewi Community Association of Great Britain and Ireland ("the Association") which is an unincorporated association with social and cultural objects for the benefit of members of that community. Following disputed elections for officials in 2006, a number of members, including the defendants, broke away and set up a rival organisation, taking with them a number of assets of the Association. The Association then nominated the claimants as an Asset Recovery Committee who commenced the proceedings in 2007 against the defendants in the Central London County Court.
On 19 November 2008 Recorder De La Piquerie gave judgment on liability in favour of the claimants and ordered the defendants to return assets of the Association. At the same time he directed an enquiry as to damages suffered by the claimants by reason of the defendants' actions. Subsequently, those damages were assessed at a hearing on 21 April 2010 before District Judge Langley, and that resulted in the April 2010 order.
The evidence for the claimants at that hearing was based on a witness statement from the first claimant dated 30 March 2010 which went into considerable detail regarding a number of heads of loss. The defendants' case now is that they were ambushed with this document at that hearing and indeed that they were personally not provided with a copy of the statement until much later in 2014.
The defendants contend and have contended since August 2015 that the order for damages was obtained as a result of the giving of deliberately false evidence before District Judge Langley at the hearing in April 2010 and in particular that the first claimant's witness statement in March 2010 contained a number of assertions which were false and knowingly so. What is more, the defendants now rely on witness statements subsequently made by two of the claimants and which the defendants contend support their own case that there was serious and deliberate false evidence placed before the court to support the April 2010 order. These are the witness statements of the second claimant dated 15 September 2014 and a second statement dated 27 January 2016 and the witness statement of the fourth claimant dated 22 December 2014. In these statements these claimants seek to distance themselves from the evidence put forward, in part on their behalf, for the hearing on 21 April 2010.
The case made by the defendants is summarised effectively in paragraph 16 of the defendants' skeleton argument for this hearing, identifying in particular four items of evidence in respect of which damages were claimed and awarded which it is now said were knowingly false. To summarise: First the claim for lost profits in respect of the biannual cultural event in the sum of £6,440 was substantially overinflated when profits formed no part of such events and where the relevant previous events had in fact been loss making. Secondly, a claim for a cost of £960 for a television advert on a channel called Ben TV could not be sustained in circumstances where the second claimant now says that he had personally made the arrangements for that advert at a lower cost and indeed had not claimed reimbursement from the Association at all. Thirdly, the claim for loss of use of the Association website in the sum of £5,350 was countered by evidence from the web designer and a former chairman of the Association to the effect that the website had in fact been dormant since 2003. Fourthly, claims totalling some £7,061 in respect of fees and expenses incurred by the claimants for attendance upon their legal representatives had been advanced in circumstances where the relevant persons attending had given their time free of charge and in respect of certain occasions when at least one of the claimants was not even present at the relevant events and thus that time in attendance had not happened. In this way it is said by the defendants that the April 2010 order was obtained by the claimants by deception. By the application before me the defendants seek an order that the damages ordered on 21 April be set aside. In response, the claimants contend that the application before the court is misconceived and should be dismissed as an abuse of process.
The Procedural History
On 14 August 2015 the defendants applied to the Central London County Court seeking to set aside the April 2010 order, relying on a witness statement from the first defendant. That...
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