Zehour Chelfat v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis and Others (listed in the Schedule hereto)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Lavender |
| Judgment Date | 30 July 2020 |
| Neutral Citation | [2020] EWHC 2765 (QB) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 30 July 2020 |
| Docket Number | Case No: QB-2019-001795 |
[2020] EWHC 2765 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Lavender
Case No: QB-2019-001795
Mr Robert Talalay appeared on behalf of the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis
Mr Matthew Flynn appeared on behalf of the Ministry of Justice and the Crown Prosecution Service
Mr James Beaton appeared on behalf of Primark Stores Limited and Lodge Security Limited
The Claimant did not attend and was not represented
The purpose of this hearing was to allow for the oral reconsideration of various orders which I have made in response to applications made by Ms Zehour Chelfat and to deal with an issue arising in her claim against Primark Stores Limited and Lodge Security Limited. Many of the applications to which I have referred were applications for permission to issue claims or make applications, permission which Ms Chelfat required because of the general civil restraint order which I made on 2 October 2019.
Paragraph 4.6(3) of CPR Practice Direction 3C provides that such applications will be determined without a hearing. The effect of that provision is that I ought not to have indicated in my orders of 21 January and 6 February 2020 that Ms Chelfat could apply for those orders to be set aside, varied or discharged. Indeed, in my most recent order on 3 July 2020, I said that Ms Chelfat could not apply for the order to be reconsidered at a hearing. That was in accordance with paragraph 4.6(3) of the practice direction and I will do the same in any future such orders.
In respect of my earlier orders however, having directed that Ms Chelfat could apply for them to be set aside, I considered that it was only fair that she should have that opportunity. Ms Chelfat did not issue application notices asking for my orders to be set aside, but she communicated with the court, and in particular she wrote a letter to the court dated 13 May 2020 in which she asked for hearings in respect of each of the six orders which I made between January and April this year, ie, on 21 and 22 January, 6 February, 17 March and 2 and 15 April 2020.
In my order of 20 May 2020, I directed that Ms Chelfat should be treated as having applied for the reconsideration of each of those orders and that they would be reconsidered today. Ms Chelfat has thus had over two months' notice of this hearing and of the scope of this hearing. During that time she has made a number of applications and submissions and sent a considerable number of emails to the court, even after I made an order on 26 May 2020 that she must not send any email to any office, member of staff or judge of the High Court or of any county court. (The reason for that order was that Ms Chelfat had repeatedly sent abusive emails to the court, including one on 21 May in which she said that I was a racist judge, known to be a paedophile, that a court official was racist as well and, indeed, that the whole Royal Courts of Justice was racist, except for a few.)
In my order of 20 May 2020, I also directed that any defendant who wanted to attend this hearing must give notice to the court and to Ms Chelfat by 4 pm on 12 June 2020 and that any defendant who wanted to file submissions, evidence and/or other documents for consideration at this hearing must do so by the same date. This direction was intended to give Ms Chelfat ample notice of what the defendants wanted to put before the court.
The defendants who are represented before me today are: the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, represented by Mr Robert Talalay; the Ministry of Justice and the Crown Prosecution Service, represented by Mr Matthew Flynn; and Primark Stores Limited and Lodge Security Limited, represented by Mr James Beaton.
Ms Chelfat has not attended today's hearing. She has not sent a message to indicate why she is not attending, despite my causing an email to be sent to her shortly after the hearing was called on at 10.30 inviting a response by 11.30. She has, however, in a number of recent emails which I have seen, asserted that she is unwell and too ill to deal with this matter and she has on a number of occasions invited me to adjourn this hearing on that basis. However, I bear in mind what I said in paragraphs 4 to 8 of my order of 21 January 2020:
“4. In the Second and Third Applications the Claimant asserts that “I had some disruption between September and October which did not allow me access to the Court”. This statement is misleading and untrue. The Claimant had access to the Court during that period. In particular:
(a) She sent several emails to the Court in connection with a hearing on Thursday 26 September 2019.
(b) She issued an application on Wednesday 25 September 2019 by which she sought the adjournment of the hearing on the following day. She made a four-page witness statement in support of that application.
(c) On Friday 27 September 2019 she attended the Royal Courts of Justice for a listing meeting in the Court of Appeal.
5. On that occasion the claimant was arrested by the tipstaff because she had failed to attend the hearing which she should have attended on Thursday 26 September 2019, the purpose of which was to determine whether or not she had been in contempt of court in the way in which she had conducted herself in a number of hearings in the County Court at Central London. She represented herself before me on Friday 27 September and Wednesday 2 October 2019 and showed herself to be quite able to do so. She was keen to attend a further hearing in one of her cases which was listed for 9 October 2019.
6. I found her to be in contempt of court and committed her to prison for four weeks, two of which she will have spent in prison. For those two weeks, she will have had difficulties in conducting her civil litigation. For the remainder of September and October 2019, however, she has had access to the court. For example, she sent four emails to the court on 21 and 22 October 2019 in response to an order made on 21 October 2019 by HHJ Dight in claim number DO2CL725.
7. It is instructive for present purposes to consider the reasons which the Claimant gave in support of her claim that she could not attend the hearing on Thursday 26 September 2019.
(a) She said in her emails that she had to go abroad to care for a sick relative. She did not identify that relative in her emails to the court. At the hearing she told me that the relative was her mother who had been unwell for years, but whom...
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