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England and Wales High Court (Chancery Division) Decisions


You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Chancery Division) Decisions >> Batra v Castle Trust Captial Plc [2025] EWHC 1555 (Ch) (20 June 2025)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2025/1555.html
Cite as: [2025] EWHC 1555 (Ch)

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Neutral Citation Number: [2025] EWHC 1555 (Ch)
Case No: CH-2025-000043

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
BUSINESS AND PROPERTY COURTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES
CHANCERY APPEALS (ChD)

Royal Courts of Justice, Rolls Building
Fetter Lane, London, EC4A 1NL
20/06/2025

B e f o r e :

MR JUSTICE ADAM JOHNSON
____________________

Between:
GHANSHYAM BATRA
Appellant

- and –


CASTLE TRUST CAPTIAL PLC
Respondent

- and –


MICHAEL COMMINS
(in his capacity as the trustee in bankruptcy of Ghanshyam Batra)

Third Party

____________________

Jackson Yamba for the Appellant
Daniel Petrides (instructed by Brecher LLP) for the Respondent

Hearing date: 19 June 2025

____________________

HTML VERSION OF JUDGMENT APPROVED
____________________

Crown Copyright ©

    This judgment was handed down remotely at 2pm on Friday 20 June 2025 by circulation to the parties or their representatives by e-mail and by release to the National Archives.

    Mr Justice Adam Johnson:

  1. This is an application to stay a bankruptcy order pending the outcome of an appeal.
  2. The relevant approach is well settled and was common ground between the parties. The usual position is that a stay will not be ordered in an appeal in a bankruptcy case. Only rare circumstances will justify a stay, although there may be circumstances where it is appropriate to modify the effect of a bankruptcy order, for example where there appear to be substantial grounds for an appeal and where an order would cause irreparable damage to the debtor: see per David Richards J. in Foster v. Davenport (2011) (unreported), but cited by Bacon J in Tyschenko v. Hyde [2024] EWHC 838 (Ch) at [62].
  3. The debtor/Appellant here is Mr Batra. He was adjudged bankrupt by Order of DJ Revere on 23 January 2025. Mr Batra has sought permission to appeal that Order. The permission application is still to be determined. Mr Batra's application for a stay was refused on the papers by my Order dated 3 April 2025. The present hearing comes about because of Mr Batra's request for an oral hearing to vary or set aside that Order.
  4. In developing the renewed stay application this morning, Mr Yamba (who acted as advocate for Mr Batra with the Court's permission) has emphasised two points as regards Mr Batra's intended appeal. The first is a complaint that DJ Revere in making the bankruptcy Order did not properly reflect the value of a cross-claim asserted by Mr Batra. The second point is a complaint that the Judge was wrong to refuse an adjournment of the January 2025 hearing at which the bankruptcy order was made, and of an earlier hearing in December 2024 which I will describe below.
  5. Mr Yamba has also emphasised the potential harm to Mr Batra if there is no stay. In his very clear and helpful written submissions, he said that the harm would be financial, reputational and commercial. Mr Yamba argued that the balance of the relevant factors was clearly in favour of a stay pending the outcome of the intended appeal.
  6. Despite Mr Yamba's attractive presentation of Mr Batra's case, I have decided there should not be any stay. That is for the following reasons.
  7. To start with, there is the question whether the grounds of appeal appear so substantial as to take the matter out of the ordinary run of bankruptcy cases. In my opinion, they do not.
  8. The main point was Mr Batra's argument that he has a cross-claim against the Petitioning Creditor, Castle Trust, which stands to extinguish the amount of the Petition debt. Mr Batra says that District Judge Revere did not properly take that into account, and so was wrong in her decision to make a bankruptcy order.
  9. I am afraid I do not see this argument as sufficiently compelling as to take the present case out of the norm and to justify a stay.
  10. Let me start with some brief background.
  11. Mr Batra was a borrower from Castle Trust under loan agreements entered into in 2017. There was security over certain properties. Receivers were appointed and the properties were sold at various points in 2019. The sale proceeds though fell short of the amounts owing by about £320,000. The Petition debt arises from that balance.
  12. Mr Batra's argument is that the properties were sold at an undervalue. At the heart of his case is the assertion that the Receivers improperly rejected an earlier, and higher, offer for certain of the same properties made in 2018. It is said that the earlier offer was for £1.275m, which would, if accepted, have cleared the then outstanding indebtedness in full.
  13. Although no transcript of her Judgment on this point is presently available, it is clear that DJ Revere cannot have been impressed by it. The argument on appeal has to be that she was wrong. As I see it, however, there are a number of problems for Mr Batra.
  14. First, there is a limitation issue. Three of the relevant property sales by the Receivers took place in January 2019. I understand that no claims arising from such sales have been made, and on the face of it are now time-barred. Mr Yamba made the point, correctly, that time may be extended in cases where there is fraud or concealment, but that observation was made in general terms only and without reference to specifics. As to the final property, this was sold only in November 2019, and so any claim in relation to that is technically still in time; but it has not progressed beyond the stage of correspondence.
  15. Second, as Mr Petrides for Castle Trust pointed out in his submissions, there is a point about the inherent implausibility of the alleged cross-claim. If there really was a serious and viable offer for £1.275m in 2018, sufficient to discharge all outstanding indebtedness, there would have been no good reason for the Receivers to reject it, or for the lender, Castle Trust, to encourage them to do so (which is part of Mr Batra's case, as I will shortly explain). Mr Batra's complaint is therefore counterintuitive at a basic level. I accept that is not a complete answer to the allegation, because sometimes people do things one would not expect; but it is a relevant factor in assessing for present purposes whether the complaint has such obvious strength that it should justify a stay of the bankruptcy order.
  16. Third, and perhaps most importantly, there have already been efforts by Mr Batra to advance his complaint, and they have come to nothing. This is a little more complicated to explain.
  17. The starting point is that when first served by Castle Trust with a statutory demand, Mr Batra applied to set it aside, relying on the idea that the relevant sales had been at an undervalue. Although initially successful on that argument, he was unsuccessful on appeal before Mr James Pickering QC (sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge), whose reasoning was that because the Receivers were in law agents of Mr Batra not of Castle Trust, there was no possible cross-claim against Castle Trust, even if one assumed a default by the Receivers (see [2022] EWHC 2678 (Ch)). There might have been such a claim had there been evidence that the Receivers were not acting independently, and so were acting as agents of Castle Trust; but Mr Pickering QC also concluded at [17] of his Judgment, in a section headed "The evidence", that there was no realistic prospect of Mr Batra " ... showing that the receivers were acting at the bidding of Castle Trust or that Castle Trust was interfering and directing the receivers to act in a way in which they would not otherwise have acted." That Judgment was delivered in October 2022.
  18. The matter did not end there, however. The Petition was issued in January 2023. It came on for a final hearing a year later, on 5 February 2024. On the same day, Mr Batra filed a Notice of Opposition. This made the assertion that the September 2018 offer of £1.275m had been refused by the Receivers, " ... on the specific instruction or direction of the Petitioning Creditor". DJ Revere was seised of the matter and despite the apparent overlap between this assertion and the matter already determined by Mr Pickering QC, was appropriately cautious. Instead of proceeding with the Petition she adjourned it and made an Order giving directions for determination of the issue Mr Batra had identified. These included a direction that Castle Trust "give disclosure of all documents, pertaining to the Sale by the Receivers for the period 7 September 2018 to 31 October 2018". That time period was obviously designed to flush out any further materials which might substantiate the allegation that Castle Trust had somehow exercised improper control over the actions of the Receivers in rejecting the 2018 offer.
  19. Disclosure was duly given by way of List at the end of February 2024. I was shown a clip of the disclosed documents during the hearing. A number of them bear redactions, for example to disguise the names of recipients of emails. It seems the redactions were a matter of concern for Mr Batra as was the disclosure generally, and he objected. In order to move matters on, DJ Hart made a further Order at a hearing on 1 May 2024. As to disclosure, this required Castle Trust to serve a witness statement verifying the disclosure list already provided; and it then required Mr Batra, if he still at that stage wished to pursue any specific issues in relation to disclosure, to serve a formal application with a supporting witness statement within 7 days, such application or evidence to "identify the particular documents or categories of document allegedly omitted from the disclosure and the reasons for opposing any redactions ...".
  20. In response to this Order, a Ms Yeri Bunsell of Castle Trust made a witness statement verifying the disclosure list, and testifying to the process for disclosure, which had included a review by Castle Trust's solicitors. Mr Batra though still objected and served his own witness statement on 15 July in which he made a number of general points, including as to the redactions. He said it was unfair for him not to see the full, unredacted documents in order to understand Castle Trust's actions.
  21. There was a hearing on 4 December 2024 to deal with these outstanding disclosure questions. Mr Batra did not attend. He had been involved in a car accident in early November. He sought an adjournment but this was refused and the hearing proceeded without him, and his remaining objections were dismissed.
  22. The next hearing was on 22 and 23 January 2025. This was the hearing of the Petition itself. Again Mr Batra sought to adjourn, relying on his claim of ill-health following his earlier accident. For this hearing, however, Mr Batra did appear, at least to address the Court on the question of an adjournment. He attended in person. I am told by Mr Petrides that Mr Batra refused numerous suggestions made by DJ Revere to facilitate his participation, despite the Judge also saying that she was willing in effect to allow him to re-open the points about disclosure and redactions already addressed at the hearing on 4 December 2024. At any rate, when the adjournment request was refused, Mr Batra chose to leave the hearing. The Judge went on to hear the Petition and to make a bankruptcy order.
  23. Taking stock in light of this rehearsal of the history, none of it creates a sense of conviction in Mr Batra's cross-claim. It rather does the opposite. The basic elements of the cross-claim, including in particular the idea that Castle Trust had somehow exercised control over the Receivers, were live during the challenge to the statutory demand, and James Pickering QC determined on the evidence then available that there was no real prospect of that allegation succeeding. Over a year later, DJ Revere in February 2024 might have concluded that that was already enough to justify proceeding with the Petition, but she did not and instead she ordered disclosure so the matter could be investigated further. The relevant documents, having been compiled by solicitors, were duly produced, albeit bearing some redactions. It was not suggested to me at the hearing that anything in the disclosed materials actually supports the theory that there was any improper behaviour by Castle Trust vis-à-vis the Receivers. Instead, the substance of Mr Batra's ongoing complaint – reiterated on his behalf by Mr Yamba – is about the unfairness of the redactions. But as I have explained, there was a mechanism under DJ Hart's order of 1 May 2024 which allowed him to challenge those redactions. He served a witness statement maintaining his complaint, but only in general terms, and the complaint was effectively rejected by DJ Revere at the hearing on 4 December 2024. The upshot is that after many years of probing the issue, the basic evidential elements of the alleged cross-claim against Castle Trust are still incomplete. There is no clear evidence at all supporting Mr Batra's case theory. What remains is no more than a suspicion, that if DJ Revere had ordered removal of the redactions, something further might have been revealed to justify the conclusion that Castle Trust had improperly exercised influence over the Receivers.
  24. To my mind, however, this is all rather too speculative to justify granting the stay which is sought. The basic decision for the Judge was whether there was any real dispute about the Petition debt. She plainly thought not, and so made the bankruptcy order. Given the materials available to her about the potential cross-claim, the present case for saying she was wrong is simply not strong enough to justify departing from the usual approach of declining to stay the bankruptcy order.
  25. The same result follows even taking account of the other potential appeal point made by Mr Batra, namely that the Judge was wrong to refuse adjournments of both the December 2024 hearing and the January 2025 hearing in light of his ill-health. Mr Petrides in his submissions said that despite Mr Batra's car accident occurring on 2 November 2024, he had failed to produce any evidence complying with the guidance in Levy v. Ellis-Carr [2012] EWHC 63 (Ch) either at the hearing in December 2024 or in January 2025. There was some discussion before me about what had in fact been produced. Mr Batra referred to information about his physiotherapy treatment and medication, which was available both in December 2024 and in January 2025. The detail of this may need to be looked at later. The question for now though is whether there should be a stay, and as part of that inquiry, whether the intended appeal has about it the degree of conviction necessary to take it out of the norm. The argument on the adjournment issue does not appear to me to have that sort of character.
  26. Pausing there, there is nothing in the analysis so far to suggest that it would be appropriate in this case to depart from the usual approach and thus grant a stay. Mr Batra's further points about the risk if irremediable harm do not tilt the balance in his favour. It was said that the bankruptcy will prevent him from properly managing his affairs, in particular in relation to his property at 130 Cowley Road; that it will give rise to reputational damage; and that it may damage ongoing commercial relationships. These are all features of any bankruptcy, however, and so cannot justify a departure from the usual approach. Other factors meanwhile strongly support the idea that matters should follow the normal course. I received some short submissions at the hearing from a representative of the Official Receiver, who confirmed that 15 creditors have been identified so far with claims amounting to some £1,459,331. Their interests need to be protected, and there are obvious risks if a stay is imposed which allows ongoing dealings by Mr Batra with his assets. The Official Receiver put it the other way around, and said that in light of the Order already made, it was important that the Official Receiver be able to discharge its duties by securing the assets of the estate, identifying creditors and obtaining information. I agree.
  27. I should mention one further matter raised by Mr Yamba's Skeleton, which is that Mr Batra has made certain complaints about the conduct of the Official Receiver. Such matters must be dealt with through the appropriate channels. Whatever their merits or demerits, they do not assist with the question whether there should be a stay pending the outcome of Mr Batra's intended appeal.
  28. It follows from what I have said that in my judgment, Mr Batra's request to stay his bankruptcy pending appeal should be dismissed.
  29. Finally, I should like to express my thanks both to Mr Petrides and to Mr Yamba for their invaluable assistance during the hearing, which enabled the matters arising to be dealt with both fairly and efficiently.

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