Royal Brompton Hospital NHS Trust v Hammond (No. 8)
Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
Judgment Date | 23 May 2001 |
Neutral Citation | [2001] EWCA Civ 778 |
Date | 23 May 2001 |
Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
Docket Number | Case No: A1/2000/3495 |
[2001] EWCA Civ 778
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM TECHNOLOGY AND CONSTRUCTION COURT
HIS HONOUR JUDGE RICHARD SEYMOUR QC
Royal Courts Of Justice
Strand, London, Wc2a 2ll
Lord Justice Aldous
Lord Justice Clarke and
lord justice laws
Case No: A1/2000/3495
Mr A. Edwards-Stuart QC and Mr M. Cannon (instructed by Masons for the Appellants)
Mr M. Taverner QC and Mr R. Edwards (instructed by Fishburn Morgan Cole for the eighth, fourteenth and fifteenth defendants "WGI")
Mr A. Williamson (instructed by Davies Arnold Cooper for the 1st to 7th and 13th defendants/respondents "PMI")
Mr A. Bartlett QC and Miss J. Davies (instructed by Berrymans Lace Mawer for the ninth and sixteenth defendants/respondents "AA")
The 10th, 11th and 12th defendants were not present or represented.
This is the judgment of the Court.
The draft judgments in this case were supplied to the parties on Tuesday 27th March 2001. They were called draft judgments and the front page contained the usual notice in this form:
"This is a draft of the judgment to be handed down on Thursday 29th March 2001 at 10 a.m. in Court No 66. It is confidential to Counsel and Solicitors, but the substance may be communicated to clients not more than two hours before the giving of judgment. The official version of the judgment will be available from the shorthand writers once it has been approved by the judge.
The Court is likely to wish to hand down its judgment in an approved final form. Counsel should therefore submit any list of typing corrections and other obvious errors in writing to the clerk to Aldous LJ … by 12 noon on Wednesday 28th March 2001 (nil return required) so that changes can be incorporated, if the Court accepts them, in the handed down judgment."
The parties provided a list of typographical errors and other slips that were subsequently incorporated into the judgments to enable them to be handed down in an approved final form at 10am on Thursday 29th March 2001. AA and subsequently WGI and PMI also supplied skeleton arguments suggesting that some of the conclusions reached were wrong. At their request the judgments were not formally handed down on the Thursday morning, but directions were given for skeleton arguments to be provided to assist the Court to decide whether it should reconsider the judgments and, if so, what the result should be.
There can be no doubt that a judge has jurisdiction to recall, vary or alter his judgment or proposed order up to the time that the order is perfected. That has been the law for many years as appears from In re: Harrison's Share Under A Settlement [1953] Ch. 260; In re: Barrell Enterprises [1973] 1 WLR 19; Pittalis v Sherefettin [1986] QB 868; Hillman v Rogers C.A. unreported 30th April 1998. That jurisdiction remains whether the judgment has been given orally, has been handed to the parties in draft or has been formally handed down. That jurisdiction of the Court was not altered by the CPR as was made clear in Stewart v Engel [2000] 1 WLR 2268.
Counsel who appeared before us agreed that the Court had jurisdiction in this case to alter their judgments in any way it thought fit. However they differed as to the way that we should exercise our discretion.
The draft judgments in this case were supplied to the parties pursuant to the Practice Statement ( [1998] 1 WLR 825). That supply did not constitute the giving of the judgments as Brooke LJ pointed out in Prudential Assurance Co. Ltd v McBains Cooper [2000] 1 WLR 2000 at 2008:
"It is clear that when a copy of the judgment is sent to the parties' legal advisers in accordance with this new practice, it is not at that time being given or made within the meaning of CPR r. 40.7 ('a judgment or order takes effect from the day when it is given or made'): compare Holtby v Hodgson (1889) 24 QBD 103. It is also clear that the judge is at liberty to alter the terms of his or her judgment (whether to make minor corrections or for any other reason) before handing it down formally in court. This, however, is nothing new, because it has always been within the powers of a judge to reconsider his or her decision at any time before it is entered and perfected: … It has always been within a judge's powers to alter at any time his or her judgment if it has been delivered orally, although not so as to contradict the order made on the judgment once it has been perfected …
It follows under the new practice the process of delivering judgment is initiated when the judge sends a copy of it to the parties' legal advisers."
Counsel for the respondents submitted that a court would more readily alter its judgment before it was officially handed down than afterwards. We disagree. Of course culpable delay will be a factor against alteration but, absent such delay, we can see no reason why timing should normally be relevant. In particular there does not appear to us to be any logical reason why a judgment should be more readily altered after delivery to the parties, but before handing down, than during delivery of an oral judgment or immediately after delivery.
The essential difference between the parties' submissions concerns the exercise of discretion by this Court to the facts of this particular case. They agree that the discretion has not been fettered by any statutory enactment and in that sense is unfettered. However it has to be exercised in accordance with the overriding objectives of the CPR. That was the conclusion of this Court in Stewart v Engel. In that case the judge had, after delivering his judgment dismissing the claim, allowed the claimant to amend his statement of claim to plead a claim in conversion. The Court of Appeal, by a majority, allowed the appeal. Sir Christopher Slade giving the first judgment said at page 2275 G:
"Since there must be some finality in litigation and litigants cannot be allowed unlimited bites of the cherry, it is not surprising that, according to the authorities, there are stringent limits to the exercise of the discretion conferred on the court by the Barrell jurisdiction. In that case itself [1973] 1 WLR 19, Russell LJ...
To continue reading
Request your trial-
GPP Big Field LLP v Solar EPC Solutions SL (formerly known as Prosolia Siglio XXI)
...on Insurance Law (14 th edn, Sweet & Maxwell 2018) paras [24–067] to [24–075]. 80 See paragraph 81 See eg Royal Brompton Hospital National Health Service Trust v Hammond [2001] EWCA 778, [2001] BLR 82 See eg Re L and B (Children) [2013] UKSC 8, [2013] 1 WLR 634 at [16]–[27] 83 See paragraph......
-
Andrew Gregg v North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust
...particular 40.2.1.2 which considers the position with respect to alteration of draft judgments, as well as the judgment of Royal Brompton Hospital NHS Trust v Hammond [2001] EWCA Civ 778. In essence, the position I should take will depend on the facts and circumstances before me and I shoul......
-
Paul Richards v Speechly Bircham LLP
...has said that such a step should only be taken in an exceptional case or for strong reasons: see Royal Brompton NHS Trust v Hammond [2001] EWCA Civ 778, at [11], and Egan v Motor Services (Bath) Ltd [2007] EWCA Civ 1002; [2008] 1 WLR 1589 (Note), at [51]. Although the scope for the parti......
-
Condron v National Assembley for Wales
...to a number of authorities, including Royal Brompton Hospital National Health Trust Service v Frederick Alexander Hammond & Others [2001] EWCA Civ 778 and Robinson v Fernsby & Another [2003] EWCA Civ 1820. Those authorities are discussed at some length in Vol 1 of the 2006 White Book at par......