Nicola v Enfield Magistrates Court

Where a judicial review application challenges an adjournment decision based on facts later shown to be potentially incorrect, fairness may require the factual position to be established before the legal question is determined. The court should, where possible, assess the decision against the facts as they were, rather than merely the facts believed by the lower court. The court may adjourn the application to obtain a fuller account from the relevant public authorities, while leaving the substantive legal issue undecided.

The claimant faced criminal charges at Enfield Magistrates’ Court. His trial could not proceed because the prosecution witnesses, two police officers, were absent. The magistrates adjourned the trial after being told that the witnesses had been warned to attend.

One officer later arrived and indicated that he had not known that attendance was required. The claimant therefore sought judicial review, contending that the adjournment had resulted from a prosecution failure unrelated to the defence. The central issue was whether the magistrates had acted lawfully in adjourning the trial, but the factual basis for their decision required clarification.

1. Application adjourned. The court declined to determine the substantive judicial review question immediately because events occurring before the magistrates’ court rose made it possible that the information on which the adjournment decision was based was incorrect.
2. It was unfair to require the claimant to advance his application solely on the facts communicated to the magistrates when subsequent events might show that those facts were materially inaccurate. The claimant should have the opportunity to establish what the position actually was.
3. The court indicated that the legal question might depend, at least in part, on the facts as they were rather than on the facts as they were believed to be by the magistrates. The court expressly left the eventual answer undecided.
4. The court invited the Director of Public Prosecutions to provide, within four weeks, the fullest available written account of the steps taken to warn the prosecution witnesses and how those steps were implemented. The Crown Prosecution Service was not compelled to give evidence and was not required to attend the adjourned hearing.
5. The proceedings remained on foot. The matter was not reserved to the same constitution of the Divisional Court, although the court expressed a preference for Lord Justice Sedley to sit on the adjourned application if practicable.

The judgment records no prior appellate decision. The Divisional Court adjourned the pending judicial review application to obtain further factual information.