Viki Natasha Maughan (Formerly Wilmot) v Richard Michael and Another
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr. Justice Mostyn |
| Judgment Date | 15 April 2014 |
| Neutral Citation | [2014] EWHC 1288 (Fam) |
| Date | 15 April 2014 |
| Court | Family Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: TN99DOO733 |
[2014] EWHC 1288 (Fam)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Mr. Justice Mostyn
Case No: TN99DOO733
MR. J. Swift (instructed by Thomson Snell & Passmore) appeared on behalf of the Applicant.
THE RESPONDENT did not attend and was not represented.
Today, listed before me are three applications by Viki Maughan, whom I shall refer to as "the wife" even though she and the respondent were divorced many years ago, and one application by the respondent, whom I shall refer to as "the husband" for the same reason.
The wife's applications are:
(i) for the appointment of a Receiver under s.37 of the Senior Courts Act; that application is dated 18 th February 2014.
(ii) for an extended civil restraint order pursuant to Rule 4.8 of the Family Procedure Rules 2010; that application was made on 11 th December 2013.
(iii) for an extension of a freezing injunction that was made on 18 th December 2013 and which, by my order dated 20 th March, is due to expire today.
The husband applied on 28 th March 2014 for orders to strike out the freezing order and to suspend or stay all orders in this case, including the material orders for child maintenance. His application (which had been received in draft on 21 February 2014) was, by notice issued by the court dated 18 th March 2014, listed to be heard today.
The wife's three applications are listed to be heard today by virtue of my order dated 20 th March 2014.
The husband has been duly served by email, as the orders have provided for, with my order of 20 th March 2014, and he has unquestionably received the notice dated 18 th March 2014 in relation to his own application 2014 as the copy of that within the bundle at section A, p.50 has his own writing on it with these words:
"Alternative date when counsel available applied for at the court under EU HR6."
There can be no doubt that the husband has since had, in relation to his own application — 18 th March, in relation to the wife's three applications — 20 th March, very ample notice of this hearing.
This morning I received a letter from the husband dated 10 th April 2014. That same letter, but bearing a different date, namely 11 th April 2014, has been sent by email to the wife's solicitors and is in the bundle. The letter reads:
"Your Lordship,
I apologise for writing to you direct, but I understand from the Listing Office there is a hearing in this case before you on April 15th?
I informed the listing officer that neither I, nor new counsel would be able to attend on this date on notified dates to avoid, and suggested alternative date(s).
I do not know whether the listing office has arranged this.
I have not received service of Notice of Hearing from the opponents under court rules in any event."
This letter is of a piece of the many communications that the respondent husband makes to the court, which normally he does not trouble to copy to the wife's solicitors. He should understand that the court does not operate as some kind of advisory bureau. If he wishes to make an application to the court to adjourn a hearing which has been regularly fixed then he must comply with the rules. The fact that he is a litigant in person does not mean that any further latitude in relation to compliance with the rules is afforded to him than to a represented litigant. There is, in this court, not one rule for the rich and one rule for the poor.
If the husband wished to apply for an adjournment of the four matters which are listed before me today then it was incumbent on him to apply under Part 18 for an adjournment. An application under Part 18 requires at least seven days' notice to be given and must be supported by evidence or verified by a statement of truth. There is no evidence at all in the husband's letter which I could treat as satisfying the requirements of Rule 18, which explains to me why neither he nor counsel can attend the hearing today.
In these circumstances I decline to treat his letter of 10 th April 2014 as a valid application for an adjournment. I am satisfied that he has had ample notice of this hearing and I direct that it shall proceed. I refuse his application for an adjournment.
LATER:
I now turn, first, to the husband's application dated 28 th March 2014, which had been accepted by the court on 18 th March and has been listed for today as I have previously explained.
The application has three grounds to it. It says, first, that the freezing order of 6 th December 2013 should be struck out because the order made by Ryder J (section F, p.22) which is dated 27 th February 2013 but which is sealed on 14 th March 2013, because, in the words of Captain Wilmot: "The Judgment orders no such thing as alleged by the solicitors for the petitioner."
The basis of Captain Wilmot's first allegation is that the order goes wider than the terms of the relatively short Judgment issued by the Judge. However, that is to misunderstand the judicial process. An order will very often go wider than the terms of a Judgment and will reflect Rulings made in the proceedings along the way. In this case the Judge made a number of Rulings along the way which were not then reiterated in his Judgment. However, it was, of course, appropriate and necessary that those Rulings were reflected in the Judge's order. I have been given a clip of correspondence between Ryder J's clerk and Mr. Swift in relation to the drawing up and perfection of the order. For these purposes I need only refer to the email from the Judge's temporary clerk dated 6 th March 2013, which reads:
"Thank you for your message. The Judge accepts your amendments as indicated in a telex. Additionally, he has made further amendments of his own. It is now returned in its amended and approved form. The Judge asks that you redraft it in its final form and send a copy to me, please. He asks how you intend to serve the order on Mr. Wilmot. The Judge would like your final draft in response to his above comment this morning, please, as he wishes to contact Mr. Wilmot and respond to various correspondence that Mr. Wilmot has sent to the Judge."
The form of order sent back by the Judge, which, in fact, became version four, is the version that was ultimately sealed and which, no doubt, the Judge explained in his communication to Captain Wilmot.
Having explained these elementary facts it is completely plain that the allegation made by Captain Wilmot is totally meritless. The suggestion that the order is, in some way, a forgery, not authentic or bona fide, has no basis whatsoever. Accordingly, I proceed on the basis, inevitably, that the order made by Ryder J, dated 27 th February 2013 and sealed on 14 th March 2013, is a valid order and that all the matters which are ordered in it were validly made. In those circumstances the first basis of Captain Wilmot's application is denied by me.
The second is this: in his statement in support of his application he says in paras. 19 and 20 that he has discovered that the entirety of the sum paid in maintenance, which includes child maintenance over the last 15 years, which he says is £330,000, has not gone to his former wife and children but, in fact, has gone to the wife's solicitors, Thomson Snell & Passmore. Even if this were true, that would not be a basis for setting aside any orders. It might be a basis for variation of future liability, but no such application has been made. It is, in my view, a completely misconceived basis on which to mount a challenge to the validity of the existing orders to suggest that the wife, who acts in the form of a de facto trustee for child maintenance, has, in fact, used the maintenance for other purposes. The court does not stand as some kind of policing official as to how child maintenance is deployed. But, beyond those statements of principle is the fact that there is no evidence to support Captain Wilmot's allegation. Mere assertion in paras. 19 and 20 do not come anywhere near establishing the veracity of his allegation. For these reasons I reject as meritless his second basis of challenge as expressed in the application notice.
The third is this: from paras. 21 to the conclusion of the statement he reiterates complaints that he has made repeatedly to various Judges that the wife's solicitor, Miss Judd, and her counsel, Mr. Swift, are corrupt. He alleges that they have...
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