England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London, WC2 Tuesday, 24th September 2002

1. MR JUSTICE LAWS: This is an application for permission to appeal against a decision of Mr Justice Scott Baker, as he then was, made on 30th April 2002 in the Administrative Court when he refused permission to seek judicial review. The judicial review application lodged on 17th December 2001 named three defendants, two judges in the Lambeth County Court who respectively made decisions adverse to the applicant in December 1997 and June 2001, and the Lambeth County Court itself.
2. The relevant background may be stated extremely shortly. The applicant was in dispute with a firm of solicitors who had acted for him in matrimonial proceedings. The solicitors sued him for alleged unpaid fees or disbursements. They obtained a default judgment in the High Court for £4,392.53 and £199 costs on 23rd April 1996. Thereafter various applications were made in relation to the default judgment. At length on 17th December 1997 a charging order absolute was made; or, it would be said on the applicant's behalf, purportedly made in the Lambeth County Court for £6,978.78 in all and interest. The applicant's application to set aside that charging order was dismissed in the same court on 8th June 2001. Those are the two orders sought to be reviewed on the face of the judicial review claim form. It is to be noted that on 23rd November 1999 the court ordered that the solicitor's application to enforce the charging order would stand dismissed if the applicant paid £6,900 before 23rd February 2000. It seems that he did so. However the applicant says that the solicitors continued to demand money from him.
3. Mr Justice Moses refused judicial review permission on the papers on 23rd March 2002, indicating that judicial review was not the appropriate procedure to challenge orders of district judges made in the County Court.
4. After an oral hearing on 13th April 2002 Mr Justice Scott Baker arrived at the same conclusion. In paragraph 7 of his judgment he said:

"I have been referred to one authority, that is Hooper J's decision in Mahon v Taunton County Court, which makes it clear that it is only in extremely rare circumstances that the Administrative Court will entertain an application for judicial review from a decision of the County Court, for example if the decision was made without jurisdiction. Such circumstances do not exist in this case and therefore I am left with no alternative but to refuse this renewed application for permission to apply for judicial review."

5. Before Mr Justice Scott Baker the applicant was assisted by a litigation friend, Mrs Adsett, who has appeared before me also this morning. Despite some misgivings, I have permitted her to address me and she has put forward the applicant's case with great clarity and firmness. She submits, in short, that this is a case in which issues of jurisdiction arise so that it would be right for the High Court to entertain a judicial review of the County Court orders. In summary, she took these points: she said that there was no order transferring the proceedings from the High Court to the County Court as required by Section 40 of the County Courts Act 1984. She said the charging order nisi which lay before the judge - or the charging order absolute - was void, so that the charging order absolute was made without jurisdiction. She said that the County Court limit for charging orders is £5,000 and referred to the Charging Orders Act 1977. Here the charging order purported to be in a sum in excess of that figure. She said that the applicant did not own the whole of the property purportedly charged. She said, in addition, that the sums referred to in the charging order absolute were never the subject of proper final orders of the court. Finally, she submitted that the court aided and abetted the solicitors in the case obtaining false instruments to the detriment of the applicant.
6. None of these points begins to persuade me that it would be right to take the wholly exceptional course of allowing judicial review of orders in the County Court. The two orders in question do not lack any colour of jurisdiction on their face. The circumstances in which it may be right to allow judicial review of County Court orders in the place of the existence of statutory appeal rights, are very few and far between indeed and certainly do not apply here. It is not necessary to enter into the factual merits of the various points made.
7. There is no reason whatever why these orders should not have been the subject of the statutory appeal process. To allow a judicial review application to go ahead in circumstances like this would subvert those procedures and thus subvert the statute which establishes them.
8. This application is misconceived and will be refused.
Order: Application refused