Secretary of State for Trade and Industry v Baker and Others
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 09 June 1998 |
| Date | 09 June 1998 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
Court of Appeal
Before Lord Justice Swinton-Thomas, Lord Justice Waller and Lord Justice Chadwick
Practice - avoiding risk of double jeopardy
The overriding consideration of the court, in deciding whether to stay proceedings in which the defendant was at risk of being tried twice for offences arising out of the same facts, was the need to preserve public confidence in the administration of justice by protecting its own process from abuse. It was necessary, therefore, to examine whether the issues upon which the court would need to adjudicate were the same, or substantially the same, as those which had been investigated and adjudicated in the prior proceedings.
The Court of Appeal so stated when refusing an application by the respondent, Ronald Allwyn Baker, for leave to appeal against the dismissal by Mr Justice Jonathan Parker in the Chancery Division of his application for a stay of disqualification proceedings brought by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry pursuant to section 6 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986.
Mr Charles Hollander and Mr Jasbir Dhillon for Mr Baker; Miss Elizabeth Gloster, QC, Mr Malcolm Davis-White and Mr Edmund Nourse for the secretary of state.
LORD JUSTICE CHADWICK said that the application arose in the course of proceedings brought by the secretary of state under the 1986 Act against former directors of Barings plc and associated companies. The Barings Group collapsed in February 1995, following the discovery of unauthorised trading on a massive scale on the part of Nick Leeson, an individual trader in its Singapore office.
Administration orders were made on February 26 and 27, 1995 in the High Court in London in relation to Barings plc itself and certain of its subsidiaries. On February 21, 1997 the secretary of state commenced the instant proceedings against ten former directors. Disqualification orders had since been made under the procedure in In re Carecraft Construction Co LtdWLR ((1994) 1 WLR 172), or without opposition against seven of those directors.
The basis of the application for a stay was that the instant proceedings constituted an abuse of the process of the court in that they infringed the principle against double jeopardy; alternatively, subjected the applicant to unacceptable unfairness, oppression and injustice in that he had already had to face disciplinary proceedings brought by the Securities and...
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