Szelagowski v Regional Court of Piotrkow Trybunalski Poland
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Sullivan,Mr Justice Collins,Mr Justice Treacy |
| Judgment Date | 01 April 2011 |
| Neutral Citation | [2011] EWHC 1033 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Docket Number | CO/4568/2010,Case No. CO/4568/2010 |
| Date | 01 April 2011 |
[2011] EWHC 1033 (Admin)
Lord Justice Sullivan
Mr Justice Collins
Mr Justice Treacy
Case No. CO/4568/2010
N THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
DIVISIONAL COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2A 2LL
Mr O Davies QC and MR R HARLAND appeared on behalf of the Claimant
Mr J Hardy and MS A WILKES appeared on behalf of the Defendant
Introduction
In these proceedings we have to decide whether this court has jurisdiction to entertain Mr Szelagowski's appeal against the order of Deputy District Judge Wickham on 7 April 2010 that he be extradited to Poland under part 1 of the Extradition Act 2003 ("the Act"). For convenience I will refer to Mr Szelagowski as the appellant.
The law
For present purposes the relevant provisions of section 26 of the Act are as follows:
"1) if the appropriate judge orders a person's extradition under this part, the person may appeal to the High Court against the order.
…
4) notice of an appeal under this section must be given in accordance with rules of court before the end of the permitted period, which is 7 days starting with the day on which the order is made."
In Mucelli v Government of Albania, Moulai v Deputy Public Prosecutor in Cretiel, France [2009] UKHL 2 the House of Lords decided that "given" in subsection 26(4) means both filed and served and that the court has no power to extend the 7 day period within which notice of an appeal under section 26 must be filed and served.
The facts
It is common ground that the 7 day period in this case expired on 13 April 2010. The parties are also agreed as to what occurred on that day. There is no dispute that a notice of appeal was filed on 13 April 2010 but there is a dispute as to whether, in the light of what is agreed to have happened, a notice of appeal was served on that day.
What happened was as follows. The appellant's then solicitors, Lawrence and Company, made up six appeal bundles, those bundles, each of which included an appellant's notice and grounds of appeal, were given to an employee of the firm with instructions to take them to the Administrative Court Office to be filed and sealed. The employee was instructed to leave three of the bundles at the Administrative Court Office and then to take one sealed copy of the appeal bundle to the Extradition Unit of the CPS. He was provided with a covering letter, dated 12 April, from Lawrence and Company addressed to the CPS Special Crime Division at 50 Ludgate Hill, London, EC3, which said:
"Dear sirs, Re: Poland v Stanislaw Szelagowski"
And there was then, added in manuscript, a Crown Office reference number, CO/4568/2010. The letter continued:
"Please find enclosed appeal bundle containing the following:
• Appellant's notice.
• Grounds of appeal.
•European Arrest Warrant and.
• Arrest statement.
Kindly acknowledge receipt by signing below,
Yours faithfully Lawrence and co."
It indicated that there were enclosures.
At the foot of the letter there was a blank acknowledgement of receipt form:
"I [blank] of CPS Special Crime Division acknowledge receipt of the appeal documents listed above. Signed [blank] date [blank]."
The employee of Lawrence and Co duly filed the notice of appeal at the Administrative Court, paying the appropriate fees. He then went to the CPS and delivered a package of documents which included the covering letter. The acknowledgement at the foot of the covering letter was signed and dated 13 April 2010 by a CPS caseworker, Miss Sema Jugdharee. She is not legally qualified. She did not check to see the whether the documents in the package were those listed in the covering letter. Having acknowledged receipt she passed the documents to the CPS lawyer with responsibility for the case, a Mr Close.
Meanwhile, the employee of Lawrence and Co returned to that firm's office and gave the caseworker there three copies of the appeal bundle and the covering letter with the signed acknowledgement of receipt.
On 20 April 2010 Lawrence and Co received a letter from Mr Close. That letter said that the documents which had been received by the CPS on 13 April 2010 did not include a notice of appeal. In a witness statement dated 11 May 2010, Miss Jugdharee has produced copies of the documents which were received by the CPS on 13 April. Those documents included a copy of the covering letter addressed to the CPS, without the Administrative Court reference number in manuscript and with the acknowledgement of receipt part of the letter left uncompleted; the completed letter having been retained by the employee of Lawrence and Company who returned it to that firm. It is unnecessary to list the remaining documents in the package, because it is not suggested on behalf of the appellant that they included a notice of appeal.
It is now conceded by Mr Owen Davies QC, who appears on behalf of the appellant (neither he, nor Mr Harland, nor the appellant's present solicitors were involved in any way in the events in April 2010) that the employee of Lawrence and Company must have made a mistake on 13 April 2010 and given a different package of documents, not one of the appeal bundles, to Miss Jugdharee.
The appellant is of course blameless in all of this. There is no doubt that he intended to appeal. There is equally no doubt that, on receipt of the covering letter on 13 April 2010, the respondent knew that the appellant wished to appeal. The question for this...
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...as to what is required for the purposes of the subsection. 14 In what I apprehend is the most recent decision, Szelagowski v Regional Court of Piotrkow Trybunalski Poland [2011] EWHC 1033 (Admin), in which judgment was given on 1 April 2011, Sullivan LJ with whom Collins J and Treacy J agr......
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...despite every effort on the part of the court staff". 8 In Szelagowski v Regional Court of Piotrkow Trybunalski Poland [2011] EWHC 1033 (Admin), a clerk was instructed, after filing a notice of appeal, to serve it on the Crown Prosecution Service with a letter on which he wrote the relevan......
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...is appealing. 26 Further support for this view is to be found in the recent decision of this court in the case of Szelagowski v Regional Court of Piotrkow Trybunalski Poland [2011] EWHC 1033 (Admin). In that case Collins J. clarified that in his decision in Kane v Spain he did not intend to......