England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
(MR JUSTICE CRANE)

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London WC2 Thursday, 14th December 2000

Thursday, 14th December 2000

1. LORD JUSTICE WARD: This is an application by Mr Alexander for permission to appeal against the orders made on 17th April 2000 by Crane J. I am very grateful to Mr Alexander for the courteous way he has addressed me and for the help that he has given me in understanding his complaint.
2. The judge had two matters before him; one related to the application of the first to tenth and the twelfth to fourteenth defendants to strike out Mr Alexander's claim against them under Rule 3.4 of the Civil Procedure Rules or, alternatively, for summary judgment in their favour under part 24.2 of the those rules. The second matter before the judge was the applicant's appeal against the order of Master Trench which he made on 14th February 2000 striking out the claimant's claim against the eleventh defendant, the Commissioner of Inland Revenue and for summary judgment in favour of Inland Revenue.
3. The claim to which this action relates is to the not insignificant sum of £4.8 million, which is brought by Mr Alexander against the fourteen named defendants. The first defendant is the Prime Minister; the second the Cabinet Office; the third is the Chancellor of the Exchequer; the fourth is Her Majesty's Treasury; the fifth is the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry; the sixth is the Department of the Trade and Industry; the seventh, I am happy to see, is the Lord Chancellor; the eighth is the Lord Chancellor's Department; the ninth is the Attorney General; the tenth is the Parliamentary Counsel; the eleventh, as I mentioned, is the Commissioners of the Inland Revenue; the twelfth is the Secretary of State for Social
4. Security; and then no doubt to ensure that he was doing battle against the whole panoply of State, the thirteenth defendant was the Monarch; and the fourteenth was the Crown.
5. His particulars of claim in a handwritten document exceed 130 pages. It ends with a statement of truth that the claimant believes the facts stated in the particulars of claim were true. Having heard Mr Alexander urge his case before me, I have no doubt at all that he does believe that this is a good claim and I am sympathetic towards him because he feels he has been very hard done by, has been unjustly treated and that he is worthy of being given relief.
6. But to give just a flavour of his claim, I read from paragraph 2 which is to this effect:

"Therefore the Claimant as a Director/Major Shareholder was stopped from earning a living through the company Dreamtime Manufacturing Ltd from 1985..."

7. Then he sets out the breach of various laws and regulations, and he continues:

"...and from earning a living through other business interest ie L.A. Management, L.A. Music Sounds, L.A. Models... this was due to the misfeasance, negligence, unlawful acts, blackmail, and conspiring to blackmail by Defendants No 1 [to] 14, which cause the breaches of the Contracts between the Claimant and the Monarch (the Crown) under the Union with Scotland Act... and EEC Law. Therefore on the 8 June 1988 after a petition by the Commissioners of the Inland Revenue, the Claimant was adjudged Bankrupt in the High Court of Justice in the Chancery Division and thereafter subjected to breaches of the Claimant's private life, family life, correspondences and other matters...."

8. In support of his claim he relies on breaches of his rights stemming from the Magna Carta to the European Convention of Human Rights. Similar allegations are liberally sprinkled throughout this rather dense document.
9. It is possible to discern how his sense of grievance has arisen. Two points emerge; one relates to proceedings in what was then the Bloomsbury County Court in about August of 1988. That appears to have been a claim brought by the auditors of his company claiming their professional fees, that the company sought to defend. His Honour Judge Quinton Edwards QC refused the claimant the right to represent his company and the right to make a counterclaim against the plaintiffs in the action. The judge relied on the relevant rules of the county court practice at the time. Mr Alexander also sought judicial review of those decisions which application was refused. The claim against the Lord Chancellor or at least in part is that he was negligent in his failure to ensure that Judge Edwards QC obeyed his sworn judicial oath.
10. The applicant also submits that under European Directives it is not necessary for a company with the modest turnover that his had, not being in excess of £1.5 million, needed an auditor, and he complains of a failure to implement that directive or perhaps, if implemented, to comply with it.
11. The second major complaint arises from the way the Inland Revenue treated the taxation of those in the film industry. To cite from the judge's judgment, he says:

"The Inland Revenue adopted a policy with regard to freelance workers in the television industry whereby freelance workers were allowed to be treated on the instruction of the Inland Revenue by television companies as employees to be taxed under schedule E without the same benefits of full-time employees, i.e. Company Pensions and Holiday Pay, and the main benefit of full-time employment."

12. The judge was quoting from the skeleton argument of Mr Alexander.
13. It seems that eventually in 1993, 1994 and 1995 certain demands of tax were levied in the sums of £1,780, £14,400 and £2,424.50. Without going into the precise detail it appears that the Inland Revenue then sought recovery of amounts of that order from the applicant in the Epsom County Court. There followed the applicant's bankruptcy in June 1998 and he remains an undischarged bankrupt.
14. The Inland Revenue as the eleventh defendant, applied to strike out the claim against them and sought summary judgment in their favour. As I have indicated they were successful in that before Master Trench. Mr Alexander appealed. The matter came before Silber J on 14th March 2000. I think that Mr Alexander has misunderstood the effect of that order. It reads:

"UPON HEARING Mr Lennox Alexander Claimant in person and Miss Tann a Solicitor on behalf of the Eleventh Defendant

AND UPON READING an application on behalf of the Claimant dated the 18th February 2000 for an Order that the Order of Master Trench dated 14th February 2000 striking out the Claimant's Claim against the Eleventh Defendant and entering summary judgment for the Eleventh Defendant against the Claimant be set aside

IT IS ORDERED that

1. the Claimant's Appeal be adjourned to 17th April 2000 for direction only time estimate 1 hour 2. the costs be reserved."

15. Unfortunately, Mr Alexander has I think seized upon the words "set aside" as if to indicate that that is a judgment in his favour. Of course it is not. It is a recital to the order reciting the matter which was before the court and that application was by the claimant himself for Master Trench's order of 18th February to be set aside and that application was being adjourned by Silber J. So it was one of the matters which eventually came before Crane J.
16. There is a complaint that Crane J failed to heed Silber J's order to the effect that the matter be adjourned to 17th April for directions only. Crane J went on in fact on that occasion to deal with the whole matter. The hearing I note lasted from 11.55 to 12.15; from 12.40 to 13.05; and from 14.00 to 15.40. So it is plain that Crane J gave Mr Alexander ample time to deal with the matter, and in my judgment it was a perfectly proper exercise of discretion and case management for Crane J to deal with matters on their merits and not to delay and incur further costs by giving unnecessary directions. Any complaint to that effect is, in my judgment, wholly unarguable.
17. Looking at the judgment one is impressed by the careful way in which the judge dealt with the submissions made to him. It is plain, and Mr Alexander does not suggest otherwise, that the judge listened patiently and carefully. I will not recite in full the basis upon which the judge approached this matter. He correctly addressed rules 3.4 and Part 24.2. He considered the pleadings and gave some recitation of the history. He expressed his sympathy for the sense of grievance that was being entertained. He concluded that:

"... although the claimant has sought to establish legal principles on which he can rely, his understanding of the legal principles I have to say, despite the amount of work he has done, is misconceived."

18. I agree. Part of his complaints, going back to the events in the county court and the judicial review, has already been dealt with by the court and his remedies have been exhausted. So, too, the actions in the Epsom County Court and the bankruptcy. If there were complaints against what happened then, those had proper avenues for appeal, which if not exhausted already are widely out of time. In any event they do not form a basis of a complaint in private law for damages of the kind which is being made in this action.
19. Mr Alexander is assiduous in setting out the various enactments of which he says the defendants are in breach. He refers to the various directives and has drawn my attention in particular to directive 70/451 of 29th September 1970 concerning the attainment of freedom of establishment and freedom to provide services in respect to activities of self-employed persons in film production. But as I understood his oral submissions to me, I think he concedes in this case that the directive has been implemented by Her Majesty's Government through the incorporation of it into our law by statute or Order In Council and his complaint is effectively in this regard that, notwithstanding implementation, the relevant departments have simply ignored it. If -- and in my view he has not established that fact -- but even if he were right, as the judge pointed out, his avenue for complaining is not an action in private law proceedings but an action for judicial review for which he would need leave. I agree with the judge when he said:

"In saying that I am not holding out any hope to the claimant that judicial review would succeed. I am simply pointing out that there is a threshold difficulty which, in my view, he cannot surmount."

20. The judge -- and again I entirely agree with him -- drew attention to the fact that Mr Alexander is an undischarged bankrupt with the consequence that he has no standing to bring these proceedings. That is a matter for his trustee. The judge concluded:

"In my view, it follows, sadly for the complainant, that his case discloses no reasonable grounds for bringing his claim. Alternatively, if I had not been satisfied about that, I would have been satisfied that it was an abuse of the Court's process. I shall therefore strike out his claim against all the defendants. Quite apart from that, had I not been minded to strike it out, it is plain that there is no real prospect of him succeeding on the claim for the reasons I have given and I would have granted summary judgment against the claimant."

21. In my judgment the judge was plainly right. There is no prospect whatever, still less a real prospect of success, and there is no compelling reason why the Court of Appeal should entertain this appeal. There is, on the contrary, every reason why it should not.
22. Regarding the appeal from from Master Trench's order, this is the second time he has sought to appeal that and there is no conceivable point of principle or practice.
23. Although I express my sympathy to this very unhappy litigant, I am totally convinced he has no prospect of success. There is nothing whatever to refer to Europe and his applications therefore must be dismissed.
(Applications for permission to appeal dismissed)