England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM BRISTOL DISTRICT REGISTRY
(His Honour Judge Weeks QC)

		The Royal Courts of Justice The Strand London WC2A Friday 16 February 2001

Friday 16 February 2001

1. LORD JUSTICE ROBERT WALKER: The applicant, Mr Paul Nigel Purvis, is in prison serving a term of three years for fraud. He was sentenced in his absence in September 1999, having absconded from hospital where he was receiving treatment during the course of his trial. He has also been made bankrupt. Despite his bankruptcy (which has had the effect of vesting in his trustee in bankruptcy any cause of action concerned with property), Mr Purvis has, during his imprisonment and while he was absconding and before that, been engaged in a variety of civil litigation, including two applications to this court, one in proceedings by him and his wife against Mr Raymond Penny and the other in proceedings by him against Abbey National Plc.
2. The background to those pieces of litigation has been set out clearly and in detail by Morritt LJ in a judgment which he gave on 27 June 2000 and with which Sedley LJ agreed. These matters were also dealt with in detail by Nourse LJ, with whom Ferris J agreed, on 8 November 1999; and by Waller and Mummery LJJ at a hearing on 17 February 2000. I do not propose to go through the whole matter yet again.
3. The fact is that Mr Purvis is a litigant who cannot or will not accept that his applications have been made and have been adjudicated upon. He has no right to have matters endlessly relitigated so as to throw a disproportionate strain on the civil appeals system by repeated applications to reopen matters which are now past history. He has asked for an adjournment of this present application, which is to reinstate applications which have been dismissed and which this court has already refused to reinstate.
4. It would serve no useful purpose to grant an adjournment or to expend public funds on producing Mr Purvis from prison to attend court today. It would simply be entertaining a further application which is doomed to failure. As Morritt LJ said last June, ". . . there are absolutely no grounds to justify the time of the Court being taken up any further." The application is an abuse of process and I would dismiss it.
5. LORD JUSTICE SIMON BROWN: I agree.
(Application dismissed) (Order does not form part of approved Judgment)