England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
APPLICATION TO REINSTATE

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2 Thursday, 26th April 2001

1. LORD JUSTICE JUDGE: The dispute in this case goes back to 1987. What is before me today is, in effect, an application by Mr Wildig to reinstate his application for leave to appeal against an order made by His Honour Judge Jack, as he then was, dismissing his, Mr Wildig's appeal .....
2. THE APPLICANT: Excuse me, the judge at the time asked the defendants did the council have a letter stating what they did and the solicitor gave his correct answer; he says no, and the judge then said, "Very well, I will adjourn the hearing," and I assume today it was finishing off.
3. LORD JUSTICE JUDGE: Say that last sentence again.
4. MR WILDIG: I assume it is today. They went and had an appeal before my - - I did not know anything about it. The defendants - -they had an appeal before three appeal judges. I did not know anything about it until after the appeal.
5. LORD JUSTICE JUDGE: That is what you say. You let me finish my judgment.
6. MR WILDIG: I am sorry.
7. LORD JUSTICE JUDGE: ..... an order made in May 1991 by a district judge. Mr Wildig's application was summarily dismissed in his absence by the Court of Appeal on 22nd July 1992.
8. It is perfectly apparent that Mr Wildig has very strong feelings about this case which involve what he describes in different terms as the theft of and, in law, unlawful interference with a number of antiques and valuables by the defendants. The value of his claim was put at something in the region of £60,000. Particulars of claim were issued in July 1989. In May 1991 the district judge dismissed the claim and refused leave to appeal.
9. In July 1991 there was a hearing before His Honour Judge Jack. The order which we have in the papers states that he dismissed the appeal. Mr Wildig claims that Judge Jack adjourned the hearing and ordered that there should be a full hearing at a later date although that assertion was not made for something like 12 months after the hearing in 1991.
10. There was an oversight by which the matter was re-listed following Mr Wildig's application. It was removed from the list and Mr Wildig issued a summons to this court seeking leave to appeal and an extension of time. He was some months out of time. On the matter coming before this court for the plaintiff to show cause why this application should not be dismissed for failure to comply with the court's directions, the plaintiff was not present or represented the application was dismissed with costs. That was in July 1992.
11. Subsequently, Mr Wildig wrote to the court or made a statement to this effect that he had been duped under duress into appealing out of time to the Court of Appeal. That assertion was made in September 1992. Mr Wildig said that Judge Jack had ordered a full hearing of the case but that his order was deliberately violated through freemasonry tactics and the corruption of power. There was further correspondence.
12. The next important date is January 1994 when Mr Wildig, in an affidavit, stated that the judge had ordered a full hearing in July 1991 but that he had not yet been able to see the handwritten notes from the judge. If he could see those notes then the accuracy of what he was asserting would be established. He also said that the defence had admitted liability and quantum on 9th May 1991 and that this admission was approved by the court. A few days later he wrote another letter to this court stating that he was hoodwinked or blatantly misdirected by the defence into issuing an appeal when the order of Judge Jack, that is to say, that the full hearing of the case should take place, had never been carried out.
13. In early 1994 a number of allegations were made by Mr Wildig to various different people, the Lord Chancellor's Department and this office, in which he spoke of a typed document of Judge Jack's notes of the hearing having been falsified. He used words like "corruption" and "conspiracy to pervert the course of justice" and so on. It is perfectly clear from that very brief summary that Mr Wildig felt a very passionate sense of grievance about what had happened. By the end of March he was still continuing, claiming that his action had been gagged and that the Lord Chancellor's Department had colluded to falsify Judge Jack's judgment and going on in subsequent correspondence, culminating in an assertion that there was a minefield of corruption in the Lord Chancellor's Department.
14. On 12th May 1994 the Court of Appeal office wrote to Mr Wildig in these terms:

"The Registrar of Civil Appeals has directed that no reply be sent to this letter or any future correspondence.

In the absence of receipt of a valid application to re-instate, no further action is to be taken by this office and no reply is to be sent to any future correspondence."

15. Mr Wildig wrote two further letters in the immediate aftermath of that letter from the Civil Appeal Office demanding replies to his letters. At the end of May there was a further affidavit stating that Judge Jack had adjourned the hearing on 12th July 1991 so that further evidence could be obtained. In early June he wrote to the office threatening a writ against the Lord Chancellor. In July he repeated, in affidavit, that Judge Jack had adjourned the hearing on 12th July, alleging again that the failure to provide a handwritten note of judgment was due to a criminal conspiracy and again threatening a writ against the Lord Chancellor. One month later, in a further affidavit, he repeated the claim that the defence had accepted and signed an admission of liability on 9th May 1991 and that the judge's notes of the hearing of 12th July of that year had been falsified. There was then a nine-month gap.
16. The story resumed in the middle of 1995 with a letter from Mr Wildig to Winchester County Court, alleging what was described as "compound malpractice" and "masonic conspiracy" in the Lord Chancellor's Department, and about three weeks later a further affidavit, alleging a "web of deceit". There was then a very significant interval. As far as I have been able to ascertain from the papers, it was not until February 2000 that Mr Wildig set out further facts in a letter to the Civil Appeal Office and then demanded a reply repeating further allegations. That happened again on 6th March.
17. On 16th March there was a letter from the Civil Appeal Office to Mr Wildig enclosing an appeal form and requesting some documentation. On 20th April Mr Wildig issued an application for permission to appeal. It was taken that that was an application to reinstate the proceedings which had been struck out in this court, in his absence, as long ago as July 1992. There does not appear to have been any further contact from Mr Wildig between the middle of 1995 and February 2000. When the Civil Appeal Office replied to him on 16th March enclosing the forms for permission to appeal it was stated that the deputy master required a series of pieces of information including any court orders in the action made prior to the order of 12th July, details of telephone number, address and reference of the Bournemouth Borough Council and the detail of solicitors. Mr Wildig says that he has already supplied all the documents that he has.
18. His explanation for the delay is that he was never informed of the hearing on 26th July 1992, adding therefore "inadmissible in law" as quoted by the House of Lords in September 1992. He states that the damages claim is dated 9.5.91 -

"I attached a previous application dated 30 March, and clearly signed by the defence also on 9.5.91."

19. Before me - again as best I can glean it from the papers - Mr Wildig has two grounds of appeal: first, that Judge Jack actually adjourned the hearing on 12th July 1991 for a full hearing at a later date. There therefore never was a valid order to be appealed. He had been duped into launching his original appeal. The fact of the judge's order would have been revealed by his handwritten notes but those were falsified as a result of a conspiracy in the Lord Chancellor's Department. His second point is that he was never informed of the proposed hearing before the Court of Appeal so his absence on the date when his appeal was struck out was inevitable and nothing for which he should be blamed. He asserts that liability, as it is described, and quantum was accepted by the defendant and the court endorsed this. As far as his delay is concerned, he says that he has been met with obstruction, difficulty and fraud by the system as a whole. Having been deprived of the opportunity to see the original of Judge Jack's notes of the hearing and judgment, he was eventually permitted to look at typed notes which he says had been falsified.
20. In my judgment, Mr Wildig has not provided an adequate explanation for the long delay in this case.
21. He identifies the difficulties he had in obtaining the notes of the hearing. As I understand it, he obtained those notes in February 1994. There was nothing to prevent him coming back to the court then. As far as I can see, there is in reality nothing very much to indicate that Mr Wildig has done anything during 1993 to bring this matter back before the court. It is unnecessary for me to say more about his assertions of the conspiracy than that, beyond his assertions, they are unsupported by any independent material in the papers before me. As to the document signed by the defendant accepting liability on 9th May 1991, that seems wholly improbable given the sequence of events to which I have referred and which in the end demonstrates that this litigation was unaccountably allowed to lie dormant for many years.
22. In my judgment there is no sufficient material which would justify permitting Mr Wildig to reinstate his application for leave to appeal after all these years. In those circumstances - whether I treat it as an application for reinstating his application for leave to appeal or for permission - it must be refused. That, Mr Wildig, despite your sense of grievance about the case, is the order I must make.
Order: Application refused