Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada v Jervis
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judgment Date | 1944 |
| Court | House of Lords |
| Year | 1944 |
| Date | 1944 |
Appeal - House of Lords - Competence - Leave to appeal - Terms - Appellants' undertaking to pay costs in House of Lords in any event and not to ask for return of sum paid by order of Court of Appeal -
It is an essential quality of an appeal fit to be disposed of by the House of Lords that there should exist between the parties a matter in actual controversy which the House undertakes to decide as a living issue.
Leave to appeal to the House of Lords given by the Court of Appeal was made subject to an undertaking by the appellants “to pay the costs as between solicitor and client in the House of Lords in any event and not to ask for the return of any money ordered to be paid by this order”:—
Held, that since there was no issue to be decided between the parties, the House should decline to hear the appeal.
APPEAL from the Court of Appeal.
The facts, stated by VISCOUNT SIMON L.C., were as follows; An action was brought by the respondent to settle his rights under an endowment policy of life assurance issued to him by the appellants in December, 1929. Before he effected the insurance the respondent received from the appellants a document which purported to describe the benefits which he would receive, but which, he contended, held out as results to flow from the insurance benefits greater than the policy itself provided. The respondent's action was for rectification of the policy to make its terms equivalent to the document mentioned, and the Court of Appeal (Scott and Goddard L.JJ., Luxmoore L.J. dissenting), affirming the decision of Atkinson J., upheld the respondent's contention and decided that the policy should be rectified and that an additional sum was due to him. The appellants applied to the Court of Appeal for leave to appeal to the House of Lords and the Court of Appeal granted leave on terms which were included in the order of the court and which were as follows: “On the defendants undertaking to pay the costs as between solicitor and client in the House of Lords in any event and not to ask for the return of any money ordered to be paid by this order.”
VISCOUNT SIMON L.C. intimated that since, under the terms of the leave to appeal given to the appellants, they had no monetary interest in the result of the appeal, the House wished to hear argument on the question whether the appeal was competent.
Pritt K.C., Slade K.C. and Anthony Gordon for the appellants. The House ought to determine this appeal. It is true that the courts will not entertain a purely hypothetical case or a feigned issue and that they will not answer a question which is merely academic, but in this case the litigation was fought out at arm's length. There was no negotiation between the parties, but...
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Foo Jong Peng v Phua Kiah Mai
...Appellants retained no interest in, viz, AG v Joo Yee Construction Pte Ltd[1992] 2 SLR (R) 165, Sun Life Assurance Co of Canada v Jervis[1944]AC 111 and Ainsbury v Millington[1987] 1 WLR 379, were all distinguishable as costs were not in issue in those cases and none of the parties had a mo......
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R v Board of Visitors of Dartmoor Prison, ex parte Smith
...appeal should proceed. The submissions made and the grounds of that decision were as follows. 17 Reference was made to Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada v Jervis (1944) A.C. 111. In that case the claim of an assured to rectification of a policy was upheld by a divided Court of Appeal. Up......
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Re DLP Ltd (2007)
...decisions. In the course of the preliminary hearing, Pumfrey J referred to the decision of the House of Lords in Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada v Jervis [1944] AC 111. In that case their Lordships declined to hear an appeal since there was no longer any issue to be decided between the......