Jersey Unreported Judgments

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Cite as: [1999] UR 141A

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ROYAL COURT

(Samedi Division)

9 August, 1999

Before: F C Hamon, Deputy Bailiff,

and Jurats de Veulle and Tibbo

Between Jersey Agencies, Limited Plaintiff

trading as Designer’s Choice

And Anthony Maximilian Churchill Allenby First Defendant

And Lydia Allenby (née Babilla) Second Defendant

Application by the Plaintiffs for an Order that the Defendants pay to the Plaintiffs £42,966.15p for an account rendered

Advocate S J Young for the Plaintiff

Advocate C G P Lakeman for the Defendants

JUDGMENT

THE DEPUTY BAILIFF: An application for a hearing date was made before the Bailiff’s Secretary on 27 May and the case was set down to run for two days from 10 o’clock this morning. Advocate Alex Olsen was appointed on a legal aid certificate on 14 December 1998 but his duties have been taken over by a member of his firm, Advocate Lakeman. The difficulties that Advocate Lakeman has encountered are set out in correspondence and we have to say at this stage that we have much sympathy for Advocate Lakeman.

The difficulties turn on understanding how individuals have incurred substantial debts in this island before leaving the jurisdiction and how they appear unable to meet legal fees which have been, and will be, incurred on their behalf. Be that as it may, Advocate Lakeman, in our view, has acted assiduously on his clients’ behalf.

In passing we note that judgments have been obtained against Mr. and Mrs. Allenby, the Defendants, including an Ordre Provisoire for £13,000 for arrears of rental. We say that because a return to Jersey without funds could cause problems for the Defendants in those circumstances. Correspondence addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Allenby in London, including a recorded delivery letter, have been returned to Advocate Lakeman’s office. Eventually the Defendants were located at an address in Preston, Lancashire. They had given instructions on their answer which is fully pleaded, although Further and Better Particulars of that answer were ordered to be delivered. Advocate Lakeman assumed an Unless Order and apparently it was not. He freely admits that that was a misconception on his part. That, however, in our view, is not relevant in the light of the correspondence.

On 5 July Advocate Lakeman wrote in these terms to the Defendants in Preston:

"The Plaintiff is now in a position to serve an Unless Order upon you by ourselves whereby judgment will be taken against you in the event that you do not provide the information requested by the Plaintiff within a specified time limit. I am surprised that the Plaintiff has waited this long before serving such an Order, therefore I consider it extremely likely that we will receive such an Order in the near future."

And, to balance that on 22 July the Bâtonnier himself wrote to the Defendants, again in Preston, in these terms.

"I assume you have now provided him.. that is Advocate Lakeman … with all the relevant information to enable him to file the Further and Better Particulars, especially in the light of the Unless Order. If you have not, then the consequences of your failing to do so must fall upon you both. It is a lame excuse to say that you have been travelling around the United Kingdom and that the papers which you require are at an address elsewhere. You are involved in litigation in Jersey. You are required to provide your lawyers with all the reasonable help and assistance which they request to enable them to act for you in relation to those proceedings. If for your own purposes you leave the documentation at an address which is no longer accessible to you then you must bear the consequences. You cannot blame your lawyers."

We do not want to get involved in the correspondence that passed between the Bâtonnier and the Defendants because the file was given to us by Mr. Lakeman when we retired this morning and we feel that much of that information is possibly sensitive, but there is one short paragraph in the letter which we feel that we must cite and it reads as follows:

"In the light of the judgment date which was obtained two weeks ago there must be some real concerns regarding your ability to pay for the legal services of which you are in receipt and therefore a decision as to whether your legal aid certificate should continue will need to be taken on the merits of the case being brought against you."

This morning Mr. Allenby made contact by telephone with both his lawyer, Advocate Lakeman, and the Bailiff’s Secretary. And it is correct that through an understandable oversight the Defendants were not informed of the date of this hearing but we have had to reflect on that point and we are not certain that had they been here in person there would have been any possibility of advancing their defence, which basically contains only denials. Advocate Lakeman is of the opinion that an expert is essential to their case. We have noted from the correspondence that Advocate Lakeman let us have that on 19 April of this year, Mr. Allenby wrote to Advocate Lakeman in these terms:

"Finally we have contacted Gillian Blatchford at De Gruchy’s soft furnishing to inspect the work at West Park to provide a report to defend the claim and possible basis to issue a counter claim."

What happened to that appointed person no one appears to know. In any event the legal aid fund has not agreed to finance such an expert and in the light of the correspondence as a whole over fees that is hardly surprising.

In the circumstances, without hesitation, we give judgment in default to the Plaintiffs. We will, however, delay the effect of the judgment for 28 days to enable the Defendants to take whatever action they consider appropriate, but let them be in no doubt that 28 days from the date of this judgment if they have not taken that action then the judgment will come into force.

Judgment given on an indemnity basis.

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