England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM BOW COUNTY COURT
(His Honour Judge Bradbury)

		The Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2 Monday 29th July, 2002

1. LORD JUSTICE THORPE: Mrs Shah has lodged a number of applications in this court for permission to appeal orders that have been made in the Bow County Court, largely in ancillary relief proceedings between her and her former husband. They were all received and processed as applications from a litigant in person. But on Friday afternoon a skeleton argument was received from Miss Dixon, who has been instructed at a late stage to advocate the case on behalf of Mrs Shah. She has also prepared and lodged a fresh core bundle which contains the material that she regards as relevant and which has rendered it unnecessary to consider four other bundles which had been lodged by Mrs Shah whilst in person. We are grateful to Miss Dixon for the work that she has done in this case, which clarifies the issues, and which expresses in professional language the points and criticisms that Miss Dixon regards as sustainable. They are very different to the points and criticisms that had been advanced by Mrs Shah whilst in person.
2. Mrs Shah's basic complaint to this court is that she has been the victim of shocking injustice in the Bow County Court, not injustice by neglect or default, but injustice by a direct act of corruption on behalf of the District Judge who tried the ancillary relief case and then, by extension, she asserts that the Circuit Judges of the court have been drawn into some sort of conspiracy to ensure for the husband an outcome that he could not have possibly aspired to in any court of fair trial.
3. Mrs Shah has taken these complaints to the body that is responsible for the supervision of the Court Service, and also to the Lord Chancellor who is of course responsible for the conduct of the judiciary. That seems to me to be the appropriate channel for the investigation of those complaints.
4. The dominant feature of this case is Mrs Shah's mental and psychological stability. A number of medical reports have been filed from time to time, both by her general practitioner and also by a consultant psychiatrist. It is perfectly apparent that she is far from being a well woman, and her difficulties in the mental health area may of course interrelate to her convictions of corruption in the court of trial.
5. The case is accordingly an extremely sad case, and that root feature certainly needs to be reflected in any decision as to whether to bring litigation to a close or to admit it to an entirely fresh round of scrutiny in this court.
6. Let me recite briefly the relevant litigation history. The District Judge made her order as between the parties on 14th February. The order provided that the wife should retain the final matrimonial home on performance of three conditions. In default of performance then the property was to be sold and the proceeds divided in such a way as to ensure for the wife 91.38 per cent of the net proceeds. That of course was a manifestly unequal distribution of capital, since the final matrimonial home was outstandingly the most valuable available asset. Accordingly, the District Judge provided that Mrs Shah should receive only periodical payments at a nominal rate, expressing the view that that would not be converted into a substantive order so long as the husband was liable to pay the Child Support Agency assessments in relation to the parties' daughter.
7. This order reflected a judgment handed down in writing dated 14th January. It is an extremely comprehensive and conscientious judgment extending to 28 pages. The judge makes it plain in her assessment of the witnesses that it had not been an easy case for her to try. She said, in paragraph 19:

"It has been difficult to reach conclusions on these issues. This is partly because of the way both parties gave their evidence. Mrs Shah could only be asked questions for short periods of time as she needed to walk around because her back/sciatica problem. She had some panic attacks when she was due to give evidence and she tended to become too tired to continue in the early afternoon because of the medication she was taking for the panic attacks. She appeared to find it difficult to answer some questions because she became distressed or angry. She was very reluctant to answer any questions about her family. Because of her mental state she was not asked questions or pressed on some issues on which she would almost certainly have been rigorously examined if her mental state had been less fragile. She dispensed with her interpreter after less than an hour of evidence because he was not interpreting correctly and continued without one both on the first day she gave evidence ... and on the second and third days ... Her English was more than adequate to correct the inaccurate version of her evidence given by the interpreter and to continue on her own. She was voluble and articulate. On many occasions she did not give a straight answer to a question but I am satisfied this was not because of any language difficulties. It seemed to be caused more by her desire to make allegations against [her husband] and, to some extent, her wish not to answer the question clearly. Her evidence was not always consistent."

8. Then coming to her personality in the next paragraph, the judge said:

"Nevertheless, Mrs Shah gave the impression of having a forceful personality and a very clear understanding of the issues in the case."

9. Then in paragraph 21, coming on to the husband, the judge said:

"Like his wife, Mr Shah also found it difficult to answer straightforward questions clearly and concisely because he felt the need to go into a lot of background and also to expound various conspiracy theories concerning his in-laws which he had detected after the separation but which had not occurred to him during the marriage. Some of the oral evidence he gave was inconsistent with his written replies to questionnaires ... and with evidence he had given to the court at previous hearings ... The discrepancies have been set out by Mrs Shah's counsel, Mr Tidbury, in his written submissions. I do not need to repeat them here."

10. So this was obviously not an easy case for the judge. It is manifest that the wife's case was professionally put with expertise, since Mr Tidbury is an extremely experienced specialist junior in this field.
11. The proceedings were listed before His Honour Judge Bradbury on 6th March and he made it plain that he would give directions in the appeal on 18th April. The husband applied for the decree to be made absolute. That application came before District Judge Millard, who took the opportunity of adjourning it over for the fixture on the 18^th.
12. In preparation for the future conduct of the appeal, Mrs Shah filed an application seeking its transfer out of the Bow County Court to be heard before a High Court judge of the Family Division. That application may have seemed meritorious to a litigant in person, but it was in reality a hopeless application since there was nothing within the case that began to satisfy the criteria set out in the Practice Direction.
13. It is manifest that Mrs Shah did not intend to appear before the judge on 18th April because she caused to be delivered on 16th April a 52-page written statement with some 70 pages of exhibits in which she put her case, and in which indeed she said that she did not regard it as necessary that there should be, as it were, a hearing involving the parties before the court on an issue so transparently simple as her application for transfer upwards.
14. So on the 18th the judge had before him only the husband's solicitor. The judge delivered a full and conscientious judgment in which he explained that he had taken the time to read all the material submitted by Mrs Shah, and he went on to dismiss her application for upward transfer. He also acceded to the husband's application for decree absolute, having obtained an undertaking from the husband's solicitor that he would take no steps to enforce the order of the District Judge pending the determination of the outstanding appeal.
15. He then received an application from the husband's solicitor to determine the appeal then and there, on the pragmatic basis that the wife was never going to attend any way and that his client was incurring costs, and also the stress of the delay. However, the judge declined that application. He said that it would not be fair to Mrs Shah, who would not have anticipated the determination of her appeal on that day, and he set the appeal over for seven days to be listed on the following Thursday.
16. That order was in due course transmitted to Mrs Shah, who then consistently made a whole series of written representations and complaints to the Bow County Court, all of which were meticulously recorded by His Honour Judge Bradbury at the outset of the appeal hearing on 25th April. His judgment on that occasion is full and careful, reflecting his knowledge that: (a) the wife was not before the court to conduct the appeal; (b) that she had significant mental health problems; and (c) that she was making the most serious allegations not only against the judiciary, but also against the staff in that court. At the end the judge dismissed her appeal.
17. I come to the applications which are before the court this morning. 2002/0839 is in effect an application issued by Mrs Shah for a stay in advance of the hearing on the 25th. I refused that application on paper on 24th April, and Miss Dixon accepts that, in so far as it is still live, that application must this morning be dismissed.
18. I come now to 2002/0841. This is Mrs Shah's application in relation to both orders made by His Honour Judge Bradbury on 18th April. They are of course the orders refusing transfer to the Family Division and the order granting the husband decree absolute on his undertaking. Miss Dixon accepts that the first application is hopeless and she cannot advance it further. Although when she prepared her skeleton argument she sought to criticise the judge for granting the decree absolute, this morning, on reflection, she accepts that that was a perfectly proper exercise of judicial discretion and not open to further criticism. Accordingly, the application directed to the orders of 18th April fails, not just because Miss Dixon feels unable to advance it, but because it is transparently hopeless.
19. Finally, I come to the application 2002/0977. Here the basic attack is that the judge should simply not have dealt with an appeal in the absence of the appellant, and in the knowledge that he had given her only seven days between the directions hearing on the 18th and the fixture on the 25th.
20. Miss Dixon has done her best with this application, but it is in my judgment as hopeless as the rest. It is hopeless for two reasons. The first is that manifestly the appellant's mindset was such that it would not have made a biscuit of difference whether the judge had given her seven days or 70 days, since she was only bound to use that time to reiterate her convictions of corruption or mismanagement in the court, and to bombard the Court Office and its officers with her complaints. It is to be remembered that in taking discretionary decisions of this sort justice is two-sided, and a judge has to reflect not only fairness to the appellant but also fairness to the respondent who is incurring costs and is subject to anxiety until the disposal of the appeal.
21. The second and even more conclusive consideration is that the appeal to the District Judge had not at that stage, and never had had, any realistic prospects of success. That is because the scheme in the family justice system is designed now to ensure that as far as possible the order of the District Judge at the outcome of a long trial is definitive. The judgment of this court in Cordle v Cordle in the previous autumn had confined the role of the Circuit Judge to correcting manifest error -- either error of fact or misdirection of law -- or correcting an order which no reasonable District Judge might have made. There was simply nothing that could be said against the order and judgment of the District Judge that would have justified the intervention and correction of District Judge Bradbury.
22. Furthermore, section 55 of the Access to Justice Act 1999 presents a formidable hurdle in the path of any applicant who seeks to introduce into this court an order of a Circuit Judge determining an appeal. Miss Dixon has recognised that it would be incumbent upon her to show some important point of law or principle or some other compelling reason why this court should admit the case. Although in her skeleton argument she has endeavoured to do so, there is really nothing of substance there.
23. For all these reasons, I am in no doubt at all that sad as this case is, and sad as is the distress and suffering that besieges the applicant, there is simply no possible basis upon which this court could entertain her applications and they should all, in my judgment, be dismissed.
24. MR JUSTICE FERRIS: I agree.
ORDER: Applications for permission to appeal refused. (Order not part of approved judgment)