England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2
		12th March 2004

1. MR JUSTICE LEVESON: This claimant seeks to renew an application for permission to apply for judicial review of a decision of the Camberwell Green Magistrates concerning his liability to national non-domestic rates in respect of premises which he had previously occupied as the sole principal of a firm of solicitors, but whose practice was the subject of an intervention by the Law Society.
2. The case arises in this way. The matter was originally listed before the Camberwell Green Justices in May 2003. It appears that it was adjourned until 29th August 2003 because of a dispute regarding liability. On that day, at the request of the applicant the case was again adjourned. A letter making the application, written by the claimant, was shown to the district judge who was told that notwithstanding this issue of liability, a lease was available to prove that he was responsible for the relevant rates. The district judge then adjourned the cases but stated that this would be the last adjournment, and that the rate payer should be advised to attend court on the following occasion as the case would be heard at the next hearing whether he attended or not.
3. That next occasion was 19th September. No correspondence had been received from the claimant and nobody attended. What happened is described in a statement very recently filed by Claudette Gayle, who I assume to have been the clerk presiding over the court. She said:

"At that hearing no new correspondence had been received from the claimant or his representative by us for submission in court. In court I brought the account to the attention of the district judge and he was advised that the case had come up at previous hearings, but at the last hearing the judge advised that the hearing would go ahead whether or not the claimant or his representatives were in court. I gave a brief synopsis of the case to the judge and he granted the liability orders on both accounts."

4. What happened, apparently, is that the claimant's solicitor, acting pro bono -- perhaps not surprisingly because she was the claimant's wife -- attended the Magistrates not on the 19th September but on the 16th, as she had identified that as the hearing date. The court was closed on that day by reason of flooding. She spoke to the court by telephone to request a new hearing date but was advised that there was no-one to provide further information on that occasion. She was told that a new hearing date would be set in due course. That, of course, was on the premise that the hearing had been intended to be on 16th September rather than, as it was, on 19th September. On 19th September the judge was not told, and there was no reason how anyone in court could have known of this error a few days earlier. He made the order.
5. In the original application the decision was challenged on the basis that the decision to hear the matter on 19th September and the refusal to reopen it thereafter was unreasonable and should be quashed. Beatson J dealt with that application in these terms:

"The mistake by your advisors, even though it deprived you of the opportunity to be heard before the Magistrates, does not arguably entitle you to relief on public law grounds since you have not been the victim of unfair procedure (see Al Nedawi [1991] ACH 36). This was the third occasion on which one of the matters had come to court and the fourth occasion on which the other had come. You had been informed that if you failed to attend court on 19th September the hearing would go ahead in your absence."

6. Before me, Mr Adenekan renews the application for permission but on slightly different grounds, although he is correct to assert that both grounds, in fact, are said to engage Article 6(1) of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, namely the right to a fair trial. He no longer focuses on the hearing in the absence of the applicant, but rather on the failure of the district judge to pay attention to the documents that had been placed before the court and to give a reasoned judgment. He relies on a note in Stone's Justices' Manual to the effect that it is a requirement of a fair trial in both criminal and civil matters that a court should give reasons for its judgment. The note goes on, "The extent of the duty to give reasons may, however, vary according to the nature of the decision."
7. He refers me to the well-known decision of English v Emery Reimbold and Strick Limited [2002] WLR 385 in which the Court of Appeal considered the duty of a judge to give reasons. In that case, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, cited the European decision in Torija v Spain [1994) 19 EHRR 553 at page 562, paragraph 29, in these terms:

"The court reiterates that Article 6(1) obliges the courts to give reasons for their judgments. They cannot be understood as requiring a detailed answer to every argument. The extent to which this duty to give reasons applies may vary according to the nature of the decision. It is moreover necessary to take into account inter alia the diversity of the submission that the litigant may bring before the court and the differences existing in the contracting states with regard to statutory provisions, customary rules, legal opinion, the presentation and drafting of documents. That is why the question of whether a court has failed to fulfil the obligation to state reasons, deriving from Article 6 of the Convention, can only be determined in the light of the circumstances of the case.

8. What are the circumstances of this case? In this case, the applicant did not attend, and neither did his lawyers. No arguments were advanced which required the district judge to condescend to explanation to elaborate upon why he was rejecting that same contention proffered to him. The case was put before him as a liability to pay, and there is no reason for not accepting what Claudette Gayle said, namely that she advised the district judge that the case had come up before and gave a brief synopsis of the case. There is no further detail of what she said but no reason to doubt that she did that which she describes responsibly and appropriately.
9. The judge granted the orders. It would have been plain to anyone sitting in court that he granted the orders because the basis for the liability had been established by what had been said, and nothing had been contended to the contrary. In my judgment there is no breach of Article 6. This renewed application, although made attractively and with cogency, fails.
10. MR ADENEKAN: Thank you, my Lord.
11. MR JUSTICE LEVESON: Thank you very much indeed.