Shadrokh-Cigari v Shadrokh-Cigari
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Wall |
| Judgment Date | 28 January 2010 |
| Neutral Citation | [2010] EWCA Civ 21 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | Case No: B4/2009/1492 |
| Date | 28 January 2010 |
[2010] EWCA Civ 21
His Honour Judge Plunkett Sitting in the Birmingham County Court on
Before: Lord Justice Thorpe
Lord Justice Wall
Case No: B4/2009/1492
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM
The Respondent was not represented and did not attend.
Hearing date: 19th January 2010
Lord Justice Wall :
Introduction
This is the judgment of the court, to which each of its members has contributed.
Muzaffer Sevil Shadrokh-Cigari (the appellant) appeals against a committal order made on the application of Hamid Shadrokh-Cigari (the respondent) by His Honour Judge Plunkett sitting in the Birmingham County Court on 18 June 2009. The judge found that the appellant was in breach of an order which he had made on 29 January 2009 and made an order fining the appellant the sum of £100.
The respondent neither appeared nor was represented when we heard the appeal on 19 January 2010. He was, however, clearly aware of the date of the appeal, as he had written to the court on 15 January 2010. attaching to his letter both; (1) a detailed commentary on the appellant's grounds of appeal; and (2) a “Scott Schedule” relating to his application to commit the appellant for (inter alia) alleged breaches of “undertakings given to the court on 18 August 2009”. We understood from the appellant's counsel that three days have been set aside next week in the list of McFarlane J, and given the view which we have formed of this appeal, it is plainly important that this judgment is before McFarlane J when he comes to consider the respondent's application.
Both because the respondent did not appear on 19 January, and because the appeal raises a number of points of general importance, we reserved judgment.
The background
We can take this very shortly, given the nature of the appeal. The appellant is Iranian and the respondent is Turkish. They married in Turkey in 1999. They have two children, both boys aged 9 and 8. There appear to be divorce and other proceedings between them in Turkey, which began on 18 May 2006. As the judge put in “since that time, (the appellant) and (the respondent) have become embroiled in, and are now locked in, an extremely bitter dispute”.
The critical question in the English proceedings has been the respondent's contact with the children. There have been numerous hearings before different tribunals. At one stage, the children became parties to the proceedings, represented by a guardian who, in turn, instructed a psychologist, Dr. Nicholas Banks, to assess the parties and to advise the court. Dr. Banks reported in December 2007 and also gave oral evidence to the judge. We have his report, which is summarised by the judge in his reserved judgment dated 29 January 2008. Amongst Dr Banks' conclusions were, as the judge put it, that the respondent was “by nature, narcissistic”.
The order made by the judge on 29 January 2008, at the conclusion of a hearing which appears to have lasted at least 5 days spread over the month, dismissed the respondent's applications for residence and direct contact, although indirect contact was permitted. Amongst the orders made by the judge was the following:—
6. both parties shall be expressly prohibited from disclosing any documents filed in these proceedings or any Family Law Act proceedings between the (appellant) and the (respondent) to any other person save for a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England or Counsel with rights of audience before the English courts and save that the (appellant) and the (respondent) may disclose to any such school as the children attend during the currency of any undertaking given in these of ancillary proceedings, the relevant General Forms of Undertakings.
Paragraph 5 of the order, it should be said (a) gives the appellant the right to disclose Dr. Banks' report and the judge's judgments given on 20 January 2008 to “any treating therapist” (the appellant had indicated her intention to undertake a course of cognitive behavioural therapy as recommended by Dr Banks); and (b) permits NYAS (which represented the children) to disclose the judge's two judgments of 29 January 2008 to Dr. Banks.
We now have both the reserved judgment handed down by the judge on 29 January 2008 and his short extempore judgment also given on that date. The former is a lengthy document running to some 35 pages, Nowhere in it, however, (nor in the shorter, extempore judgment) is there any explanation for the inclusion of paragraph 6 in his order of that date, which the appellant is said to have breached. We can thus only speculate that the reason the judge included paragraph 6 of the order on 29 January 2008 was to prevent the children from being “further involved” (a phrase used by the judge in his reserved judgment) in the Turkish proceedings.
In any event, the breach is variously found by the judge in his judgment of 18 June 2009 in paragraphs 4.9 and 5.7. In the former he says: —
She (the appellant) told me in evidence that she had told the police that he (the respondent) had a narcissistic personality disorder because she wanted them to think he was ‘mental’. It is, in fact, a misrepresentation of Dr Banks' view given earlier, that (the respondent) exhibited narcissistic characteristics.
And in the latter:—
I have, in the circumstances of this case little doubt that the verbal disclosure of the contents of a document distribution of which was embargoed by virtue of paragraph 6 of the order of January 29 th amounts to a contempt, being a deliberate attempt to circumvent the clearly expressed intention of the court.
In the committal order, the...
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