England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM MANCHESTER COUNTY COURT
(Her Honour Judge Eaglestone)

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2 Monday, 12th February 2001

1. LORD JUSTICE THORPE: This is an application by Mr. W for permission to appeal an order and judgment of Her Honour Judge Eaglestone sitting in the Manchester County Court on 15th February 2000. His application to this court for permission was issued on 10th March 2000. Accordingly, the hearing that he seeks to bring to review is now almost exactly one year old. That order and judgment was itself the culmination of an appeal that Mr. W brought against the judgment of District Judge Shaw given on 17th November 1999. So, therefore, this is a second tier appeal which this court must not admit to review unless Mr. W were able to surmount the very considerable hurdle of section 55 of the Access to Justice Act 1999, namely the need to show either some important point of principle or practice or some other compelling reason.
2. This is one of those sad cases in which there is a dispute between parents as to the father's contact with the children of their union, and the District Judge on 17th November 1999 was providing only for indirect contact. He set up a review for 24th February 2000, in the hope that over the intervening four months there would be some progress. He clearly wished to progress matters but perceived that future progress depended on Mr. W's ability to work with professionals in the area of what I suppose would loosely be described as anger management.
3. Clearly, the exercise of the right of appeal has gained nothing for him and, indeed, I think has cost him dear, because it means that the February review was effectively aborted by his appeal to the circuit judge, and over the last year he tells me that there has been no further progress towards direct contact, although he has worked hard with a psychologist over the last ten months. However, he says that there is a hearing now set in the county court. I would only urge him to direct all his efforts in preparing himself for that hearing.
4. Mr. W is a meticulous man who is relatively experienced in this area of litigation. For the purposes of this hearing he has prepared a bundle of documents which runs to over 60 pages, including the appendices, but the text itself is 50 pages long and beautifully presented, with references and footnotes, almost in the manner of an academic paper, but search as I have, I look in vain for anything that could possibly satisfy the section 55 test. The appeal in the county court was conducted carefully over a period of more than a day, and at its conclusion the judge delivered a judgment which transcribed to some 31 pages. The care with which she considered the case is manifest. Mr. W, although he is seeking permission to appeal that judgment, has demonstrated by his submissions this morning that it is not that judgment that he really resents. It is the judgment of 17th November given by District Judge Shaw. He says that he simply cannot bring himself to work with that judgment and he fears that it will poison any future experts reports to the court because all the experts will inevitably start with the foundation of that judgment. He has a particular resentment at the evidence of the psychologist, Mr. Bland, who was adopted by the district judge as a measure of the respective credibility of the parents. Mr. W is quite sure in his mind that he would have been able to expose the fallibility of Mr. Bland's evidence had he had Mr. Bland's contemporaneous notes. As Judge Eaglestone recorded, at the hearing before the district judge Mr. W's counsel did not ask for the opportunity to read Mr. Bland's notes. Apparently those contemporaneous notes do not exist now. That is one of the hazards of litigation. Litigants are inclined to attach over-much importance to what is only one of the many pieces in the jigsaw that constitutes the whole of the evidence and the factors relevant for judgment. There is manifestly nothing that I can do for Mr. W. Manifestly this is not a case fit for this court. The application for permission is, objectively viewed, hopeless. I have no hesitation in refusing it.
Order: Application refused; application for permission to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights refused.