England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
(MR JUSTICE RODERICK EVANS)

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2 Wednesday, 31st October 2001

Wednesday, 31st October 2001

1. LORD JUSTICE SCHIEMANN: There are in front of us three applications, one of which is listed as an application for permission to appeal (No.2194), and two of which are listed as applications for permissions to reinstate (No.1200/A and No.1365/A). Behind these applications, as I understand it, is an underlying dispute between Christine Hanson and three defendants: solicitors called Wadham Smith & Co, Woolwich Building Society and the London Borough of Westminister, all of whom she accused in a writ issued in 1994 of having acted negligently in advising her in the 1980s. The action against Woolwich and Westminister have, as I understand it, been struck out, and on the face of it need concern us no longer.
2. The application to reinstate (No.1200/A) arises in this way. The action against Wadham Smith was struck out by Master Ungley on 18th September 2000. It seems that Miss Hanson was there for part of the hearing but then left because she became upset, and Master Ungley, as I say, struck it out. From the papers it appears that permission to appeal was refused on paper by Blofeld LJ and by Sullivan J in court, that last being on 20th November 2000, where he records in the order:

"The appellant appeared in person having requested permission to appeal."

3. However, we are told today that she did not really want to appeal at all, she wanted to have Master Ungley's order set aside, I think, on the basis that she was not present throughout the whole of the hearing.
4. The application to have the order by Master Ungley set aside came before Roderick Evans J. It was made under Part 23.11(2) of the Civil Procedure Rules, which provides:

"23.11(1) Where the applicant or any respondent fails to attend the hearing of an application, the court may proceed in his absence.

(2) Where -

(a) the applicant or any respondent fails to attend the hearing of an application;

and

(b) the court makes an order at the hearing, the court may, on application or of its own initiative, relist the application."

5. It seems to me at first blush that applies to situations where the respondent fails to attend at the beginning of the hearing on an application, and does not immediately apply to a situation where somebody walks out half-way through. Nevertheless she applied to have the matter relisted and set aside, in effect, and Roderick Evans J refused to do so. He dismissed that application and dismissed an application for permission to appeal.
6. That judgment was challenged in front of Pill LJ when permission was sought to appeal against that judgment of Roderick Evans J. Before I indicate what happened before Pill LJ I turn to another order which was made by Eady J on 7th June 2001 which was in Grepe v Loam form. The two versions of this order, which is unusual but appears to have come about because the applicant put one before the court, and then, a long time later, the solicitors for the first defendants put another one before the court. They are marginally different in some of their recitals but there is no difference of substance between them. I indicated that we would be quite content to take the one which was put before the court by the applicant.
7. I say in passing that that form of order (which appears at pages 5 and 6 of our bundle at 1365 (a)) refers to the leave of the judge being first obtained. One of the points that has been made is that the expression "permission" should have been used, because that is now the language of the Rules and therefore it was suggested that the order was invalid. There is absolutely no force in this either. Either expression can be used, they mean exactly the same, and nothing turns on that. The order is perfectly effective.
8. There was an attempt to appeal that order which also came in front of Pill LJ. It is right to say that the applicant did not appear in front of Pill LJ. She wished to be represented (he records in his judgment) by a gentleman whom we have seen who is called Mr Chitolie and who has addressed us; but it seems that he was otherwise engaged on the relevant day. Pill LJ was not persuaded that she could not attend on the day which was listed in order to argue her case, and so he gave judgment, having gone through the matter with great care, and I do not need to read his judgment out. The end of the matter was that he refused permission to appeal either the Grepe v Loam order, or the striking out order, or the failure to set aside the striking out order, whichever way one puts it.
9. The claimant, Miss Hanson, applies to set aside that refusal by Pill LJ, again relying on Part 23 of the Civil Procedure Rules, which I have already read. It would seem that we have a discretion as to whether or no to do that, but it is a matter of discretion, and in general, unless there is a sound reason for someone not attending on the appropriate day the court will not set aside a judgment which a judge has made.
10. A complicating factor here is the presence of Mr Chitolie who has joined himself to the third application (No.2194). That application purports, on its face in any event, to be an application both by Mr Dick Chitolie and by Miss Hanson. It was an application which concerns an order made by Grigson J on 1st October 2001. The application refers in the top right-hand corner to the claim number of the actions which were struck out, and refers to the claimant, correctly in that action, as being Christine Hanson, and sets out three defendants: Henmans Solicitors, CMS Cameron McKenna and Berryman Lace Mawer. We are told that those are the three solicitors who respectively acted for the defendants in action No.3726, Wadham Smith, the Woolwich Building Society and the London Borough of Westminister. The application reads as follows:

"We Dick Chitolie and Christine Hanson on behalf of the claimant intend to apply for an order that the above Named Defendants be Debarred from the Royal Courts of Justice in the Interest of the Public and the 1st Defendants (Wadham Smith & Co) be removed.

All three above Defendants HAVE and KEEP on abusing the process of the Courts without REPERCUSSION or REMORSE.

Wadham Smith & Co does not exist any more. Indemnified by the Solicitors Indemnity Fund Limited May 2000 and ceased trading 26th January 2001."

11. The position of Mr Chitolie is totally unclear in this, in the sense that he was not involved as a party in the action in which Henmans Cameron and Berryman Lace Mawer represented the defendants. Why he appears on this document was obscure to me until we heard Mr Chitolie this morning. As he spoke matters became clearer. He explained to us that he had a war against various people, the National Westminister Bank, the Law Society, Railtrack, and he tells us he has a petition in the House of Lords. I think he described it as "a ten-year's war". He informed us that the law courts were not a launderette, and I think probably in pursuit of this "war", he took this action behind which are various allegations that those solicitors had been misbehaving in a way of which he complains. He said in support of the application that they had all been adjudged guilty of negligence on 20th April 2000, that they had committed criminal offences, that the Law Society and the Attorney-General had failed to address the offences and a variety of other things.
12. The question thus arises (and I think it is sensible to deal with that first) as to whether or no we should give permission to appeal the order of Grigson J on 1st October. For my part, so far as Mr Chitolie is concerned, there seem to me to be ample reasons for not giving permission, which equally apply to Christine Hanson. That is that there is no cause of action in any action, still less in the action which is No.3726. The application notice is obscure in the extreme and proceeds from what appear to be total misconceptions. But be that as it may, Miss Hanson is in this situation. She is, on the face of it bound by a Grepe v Loam order in relation to action No.3726, and she can make no application unless she first gets the permission of the judge. The permission of the judge here was not given and in those circumstances there is nothing for us to deal with.
13. What about Mr Chitolie? He points out, quite correctly, that he is not bound by the Grepe v Loam order because he is not named in it. That is true. But he has no personal interest in the action at all. Insofar as he has any standing at all it would be on the basis that he was acting for Christine Hanson, and if that were so, which as it seems to me he cannot lawfully do, then he would be caught by the Grepe v Loam order. So for a whole variety of reasons I would refuse him permission to appeal the order of 1st October 2001.
14. That leaves the other two matters. They have been considered by Pill LJ. In principle this court will not set aside, unless they feel that some injustice has been done, an order which has already been made by the court. True it was made in absence of the parties, but the parties had the opportunity of being there and they were not there. Nothing that Mr Chitolie has said to us today gives any reason to suppose that there is any prospect of success whatever in relation to either of those appeals, and so I would refuse permission.
15. I only add this. Mr Chitolie seems to me, from what I have seen of him in the course of the last two hours, to be singularly unqualified for conducting any form of litigation. He is certainly not formally qualified. He is debarred from doing so by section 27 and section 28 of the Access to Justice Act 1999 unless he has the permission of a court in a particular case. For my part I would not give him permission to address us any further. We have in practice heard him without coming to a formal decision of the matter, but I would not regard the fact that we have done that as giving him any licence to address any court on any other occasion in relation to any of these matters, or indeed any other matter. He told us initially that he had been accepted as a litigation friend by Roderick Evans J. It is certainly true that Roderick Evans J heard him and permitted him to address the court. That seems to be fairly clear. But that does not make him a litigation friend, which is a term of art applied to those who appear for persons suffering under a mental illness or persons who are under 18. If anything, he was permitted on that occasion by that judge to address that judge. It does not give him a licence to act on behalf of other people. Indeed he may - I say no more than that - expose himself to criminal penalties if he does so.
16. I would refuse each of these three applications.
17. LORD JUSTICE RIX: I agree.
(Applications refused; no order for costs).