England and Wales High Court (Family Division) Decisions

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Cite as: [2013] EWHC 3525 (Fam)

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		Neutral Citation Number: [2013] EWHC 3525 (Fam)
		No.FD12D04076

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION

Royal Courts of Justice

1st November 2013

B e f o r e :

MR JUSTICE HOLMAN
____________________

	SUSAN JENNIFER SHIELD	Applicant
	- and -
	RICHARD ARTHUR SHIELD	Respondent
	(through his Litigation Friend, Stephen Woolfe)
	- and -
	CHRISTOPHER RICHARD FRANCIS SHIELD	Intervenor

____________________

Transcribed by BEVERLEY F. NUNNERY & CO
Official Shorthand Writers and Tape Transcribers
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____________________

MR. P. CAYFORD QC and MISS L. CADE-DAVIES (instructed by Payne Hicks Beach) appeared on behalf of the Applicant.
MR. P. DUCKWORTH and MR. T. DUMONT (instructed by Shakespeares Legal LLP)
appeared on behalf of the Respondent.
MR. C. WAGSTAFFE QC and MISS A. SHERIDAN (instructed by Shakespeares Legal LLP) appeared on behalf of the Intervenor.
____________________

HTML VERSION OF JUDGMENT
____________________

MR JUSTICE HOLMAN:

I have been faced today with a situation that is, frankly, extremely tragic and appears unedifying. After a marriage of no less than 43 years, a wife has felt constrained to petition for divorce from her husband. They have four fully adult children, namely one son and three daughters. There is a decree nisi but not yet a decree absolute. It is clearly a fundamental part of the background to recent events that the husband has been both physically and mentally or psychiatrically unwell. Therein lies a significant element of the tragedy. The situation currently is that, having been compulsory detained, he is now living again in the matrimonial home. The wife is having to live with one of their daughters.

There appears to be an intense conflict within the family in relation to certain dispositions which were, or may have been, made some years ago by the husband, and which may appear to have favoured the son in preference to the daughters and to be to the disadvantage of the wife. The result is that earlier this year the son intervened in these proceedings. An order was made by District Judge Hess as long ago as 5 March 2013 which identified a so-called preliminary issue, which was listed for hearing with a time estimate of four days, on a date to be fixed, but which has long been fixed for Monday 25 November 2013. Shortly before that, an order had been made, on 5 February 2013, by District Judge Malik, appointing a man called Stephen Woolfe as litigation friend of the husband in these divorce and financial proceedings generally.

At the time of that order of 5 February 2013, the wife herself and her advisers were concerned about the mental wellbeing of her husband and indeed, as I understand it, it was she and they who very responsibly drew the issue of capacity to the attention of the court. Her proposal and suggestion at that time was that the Official Solicitor should be invited to act as litigation friend. However, Mr. Woolfe put himself forward as litigation friend and argued at the hearing (by counsel) that he should be so appointed. As I understand it, counsel on behalf of the wife resisted the appointment of Mr. Woolfe, but District Judge Malik found against her and Mr. Woolfe was duly appointed. That, as I say, was on 5^th February 2013. It was of course open to the wife to give notice of appeal within 21 days of that decision and order, but she did not do so.

The essence of the complaint and objection by and on behalf of the wife is that Mr. Woolfe is a solicitor who is conflicted, having previously acted as a solicitor for members of the family generally, including herself. The position of the wife may perhaps be summarised for the purposes of this judgment by saying that she and her advisers consider that Mr Woolfe is far too close to some of the events which now fall for scrutiny to have the required objectivity and detachment to act as litigation friend for the husband.

During March, and by the order of 5 March 2013, the son, Christopher, was joined as an intervener to these proceedings, and the preliminary issue was identified as I have described.

The scale of the issue is very large. This family (or formerly the husband) had, and has, an engineering business and a property holding having a value of somewhere of the order of £50 million. The wife does currently have a 5% share in that overall enterprise; but the preliminary issue, as identified, is "whether the respondent's [viz the husband's] and/or the applicant's [viz the wife's] shareholdings in [the entire enterprise] are held on trust for the intervener". So upon the resolution of that issue hangs potentially as much as £50 million or, at any rate, £25 million, for it may be accepted that, on any view, Christopher does own just over half the enterprise.

Christopher promptly instructed the same firm of solicitors in which Mr. Woolfe is a partner to act as his solicitors in these proceedings. As I understand it, different partners deal with the case on behalf of the husband (by the litigation friend, Mr. Woolfe) and Christopher respectively. It is not difficult to appreciate the unease that the wife and her advisers must have about those arrangements, for the appearance is that the position of both the husband and the intervener is being entirely handled within the walls of a single firm of solicitors, and she has understandable concern as to whether in some way she might be disadvantaged as a result, and/or the proper interests of her husband, to whom she is still married, may be disadvantaged.

I am told by Mr. Philip Cayford QC, who appears today on behalf of the wife, that there then followed a very considerable amount of correspondence between the solicitors with regard to the role and involvement of the one firm. Be that as it may, it was only by an application dated 23 August 2013 that this issue of concern was first raised with the court. It was given an estimate of four hours, and listed for hearing today, 1 November 2013.

In preparation for this hearing, a bundle was produced yesterday, which extends to many hundreds of pages. I was faced this morning with three skeleton arguments totaling around 50 quite dense pages. There was a suggestion that I certainly needed to read at least 40 pages of the statements, making a total of around 100 pages of pre-reading. In addition, a bundle of authorities was produced. Almost at the outset of today I made plain, and now record, that I simply was not willing to give substantive consideration today to that application dated 23 August 2013.

There are essentially three reasons for that decision. First, the estimate of four hours, or even one day, for considering this matter was, frankly, too short. There are some hours of reading involved. The issue is very strongly contested. There is consideration of a certain amount of law, which can scarcely be described as ABC law. Further, the issues that have been raised clearly verge into issues with regard to the appropriateness of decisions taken by, and the conduct of, members of the firm of solicitors. In short, the issues are potentially very serious ones. So that is the first point - there was nowhere near enough time today substantively to deal with this.

The second point and reason is that it was as long ago as 5 February 2013 that Mr. Woolfe was in fact appointed litigation friend by the decision and order of District Judge Malik. The wife and her advisers had opposed that. They disagreed with that then, but they did not at that time take any steps to appeal from the decision and order of District Judge Malik.

The third point and reason is that the preliminary issue has now been fixed for many months for substantive hearing later this month, beginning on 25 November. I have been told that there are currently altogether about 15 lever arch files in this case, although it is forecast that they will be slimmed down to two lever arch files for the purpose of the preliminary issue hearing. Already the parties between them have spent £700,000 in costs of and incidental to this litigation, which has not yet even reached the point of the hearing of the preliminary issue.

To my mind, it would be virtually impossible now to expect a new litigation friend to be identified and to be able properly to prepare and take on this case in the three weeks between now and the hearing of the preliminary issue. I would, frankly, be astonished if the Official Solicitor, with all the pressures upon his office, had a willingness to accept, immerse himself into, and engage upon a case of this kind at that short notice; the more so as he would necessarily first have to satisfy himself that the husband does currently lack capacity. Quite apart from the problem of identifying and finding a suitable litigation friend at such short notice, not one, but two firms of alternative solicitors would have to be found who had the willingness and resources to take on this case from a standing start, less than three weeks before this significant hearing.

So I simply decline to deal with the application today for the three reasons: first, that the estimate for today was too short; second, that the issue has been raised far too late after the essential decision and order of District Judge Malik; and third, that there is far too short a time before this significant preliminary issue hearing. I wish to make crystal clear, as is apparent to all in court today, that I have not given any substantive consideration to the merits of the application. I am not dismissing it. I am simply making no order upon it today. I do not preclude that it may yet be raised again on some future occasion.

During the course of today, a great deal of time has been spent upon enlarging the estimate for the projected hearing later in November, and in giving various directions in preparation for it. I hope, at least, that that is now on track to be an effective hearing with sufficient time allowed.

There is, however, one aspect that has greatly concerned me today, which is quite separate and distinct from the issues raised by the application of 23 August 2013. That application was directed to the identity of the litigation friend and to legal representation. The issue that has greatly concerned me today is whether or not the husband does still currently lack capacity. He was seen by a psychiatrist, Dr. Sharma, on 2 August 2013, and the situation at that time appears to have been one of some improvement. On the critical issue of capacity to conduct these proceedings and make decisions about them, I have to say that I regard the report of Dr Sharma as relatively equivocal. That, however, speaks of 2 August 2013. Three more months have now elapsed and I propose, therefore, to give directions, in terms that have already been discussed and announced, for Dr. Sharma to see the husband again and prepare a further report. I have absolutely no idea what may emerge from that process, but patently the whole question of the capacity of the husband may have to be revisited by the trial judge at the outset of the hearing later this month.

I am not willing, at ten to six on a Friday evening, to accede to the request of Mr. Christopher Wagstaffe QC, on behalf of the intervener, that I say anything generally with regard to the timing of an FDR in situations such as this. But I do record my personal regret that in this particular case an FDR was not fixed before, rather than after, the trial of the preliminary issue. I am of course well aware of the argument and consideration that is invariably raised, that an FDR cannot be effective until it is known what the assets are. That may be a particularly cogent argument where there is a third party claim by somebody who is not himself part of the close family at all. In this particular case, the third party claim is made by a man who is the son of this husband and this wife. This entire litigation essentially concerns just three people: a mother, a father and their son, although I appreciate that it may impact also on the three daughters of the family. I would have thought that in this case this was a particularly opportune moment to have assembled all concerned (not necessarily the husband himself if he was physically or mentally unfit to attend) in a forum such as an FDR and to have a sustained attempt to see if a resolution to this awful conflict could not be found at a stage when there may be high litigation risk for all concerned. However, the preliminary issue is now fixed for only three weeks from now, and patently there is now no opportunity at all to interpose a court FDR, for which a minimum of one day would have to be found. But I have to say, as I leave this very long day, that I do so with a feeling of the utmost despair that this family could have spent three quarters of a million pounds just to get to this stage. They are likely to spend some hundreds of thousands of pounds in preparation for, and at the hearing of, the preliminary issue, and even that is only the preliminary issue. This family appears to be tearing itself apart, and it fills the sympathetic but detached observer such as myself with nothing but despair.