England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE DIVISIONAL COURT
(LORD JUSTICE TUCKEY, MR JUSTICE NEWMAN,
MR JUSTICE SILBER)

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2 Friday, 30th November 2001

Friday, 30th November 2001

1. LORD JUSTICE SCHIEMANN: Before the court is an application by Mr Tassell for permission to appeal the decision of 24th July of this year of the Divisional Court consisting of Tuckey LJ and Newman and Silber JJ. The decision which the applicant seek to appeal is a decision by the Divisional Court not to allow an appeal against the Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal, who had dismissed an application by the appellants to strike out various allegations which had been made by Mr and Mrs Tassel and their private company against various solicitors in disciplinary proceedings. Of course, the allegations, because it is a very serious matter for solicitors, must be put in a very crisp and clear form so that the persons against whom the allegations are made have a proper chance of dealing with them.
2. As I understand it (and I do not claim to be at all on top of the details) the Tassels say that various solicitors at various times have served them badly, and as a result of that they, the Tassels, have lost a fair amount of money because a house which they had mortgaged to the bank was sold and the money, instead of going to the Tassels, was used in reduction of their company's overdraft. They say that various solicitors behaved badly. The details of that I have not been able to glean, apart from the long affidavit which was before the Divisional Court which in the renumbered bundle which I have starts at page 99. The real desire of the Tassels I do not doubt is to get money to which they say they are entitled. But they have found themselves, they say, frustrated by the actions of various solicitors, and it does appear from what they tell me that some of the solicitors have ceased trading. I think there is evidence in relation to someone in the bundle that he was actually struck off by the Law Society, so I suspect they are people who have a genuine cause for unhappiness of one form or another which may or may not (I do not have to rule on that) give them a remedy in relation to the money that they seek.
3. The present case before me is whether the tribunal were entitled to strike out the case on the material which was before the Tribunal. That material was before the Divisional Court and is equally before me. When Mr Tassel first appeared before me in October he said that he had placed the matter with a barrister who was going to look at it for him and advise him on it. I thought at that stage it would be right to adjourn the matter; and so I adjourned it for a month. However, it seems from what Mr Tassel tells me today that that barrister was not prepared to give advice because he was too busy. Mr Tassel says has made various other attempts to get advice from various people and has met with no success. He puts this down to the Law Society, who is one of the defendants here, whom he claims are blacklisting him and instructing solicitors not to give him any help. Again he does not claim to have crisp evidence of this, but he says that he has it on information, as he puts it.
4. Really, Mr Tassell's broad complaint is that the overriding objective which is referred to in rule 1 of the Civil Procedure Rules, namely that the rules are there to deal with cases justly, is not being observed here because, he says, justice has been denied him in the sense that he has been deprived of money; and various solicitors have not been brought to book in the way that they ought to have been.
5. I suggested to Mr Tassel that this is a second appeal. The first appeal being to the Divisional Court and the second appeal being to me. If that were so then Civil Procedure Rules 52 rule 13 provides that the Court of Appeal will not give permission unless it considers that the appeal would raise an important point of principle or practice or that there is another compelling reason for the Court of Appeal to hear it. I have to say that on the material that has been placed before me by Mr Tassel I do not consider that the present case raises an important point of principle or practice. It is entirely fact-dependent. It could be said that any complaint against solicitors is a matter of great importance. So it is, but that does not necessarily mean that every complainant has a right to bring his case before the full Court of Appeal. Mr Tassel says that rule has no application at all because the first court, namely the Divisional Court was hearing an appeal not from a considered judgment of the Disciplinary Tribunal, but from a dismissal by the Tribunal of a case as being manifestly ill-founded. He submits that in those circumstances it is not a case where there have been two tribunals which have really applied their minds to the merits because the first one dealt with the matter summarily. I think that is the point of his submission. I have to say that I reject that as an interpretation of the rules. If a tribunal at first instance says that a case is without foundation and a court on appeal says the case is without foundation, then that seems to me a case which falls within the wording of rule 52.13 which I have read. But leaving that aside, as it seems to me, Mr Tassel has not put his allegations, and may be very well not capable of putting his allegations, in a form which is suitable for determination by the Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal. One does not, I am afraid, have any faith that he has an objective view of the matter. He has been hurt, so he says, and I am quite prepared to believe that for present purposes, by the behaviour of various solicitors; but the instances that he gives which he has developed before me are not such as would lead me to suppose that the Tribunal were in error in their judgment that this was not an appropriate case to be heard by way of disciplinary proceedings.
6. I am going to dismiss this application for permission to appeal on that basis. Whether Mr Tassel has any remedy, and if so against whom, I do not know, but if he has it will be much more appropriate for him to pursue that than disciplinary proceedings against solicitors.
(Application refused; no order for costs; transcript to be supplied to the applicant at public expense).