Goldtrail Travel Ltd v Aydin & Ors

An appeal should not be reopened merely because the appellate court acknowledges a limited error or because an unsuccessful party remains dissatisfied with the reasoning. Under Civil Procedure Rules 1998 Part 52.17, reopening requires real injustice and exceptional circumstances. A non-material error will not meet that threshold where it could not affect the result or the remaining reasoning. The finality of litigation is a pressing consideration, particularly where the integrity of the process has not been undermined. An application should therefore be refused where alleged unfairness is unsupported and any identified error is immaterial.

Following an earlier Court of Appeal judgment dismissing the appellants’ appeal from the High Court, the second and fourth to sixth defendants applied under CPR Part 52.17 to reopen the appeal. They alleged that the court had prejudged the case, failed to read relevant documents, interrupted submissions and misunderstood the facts. The court considered whether the alleged unfairness and a claimed misreading in the earlier judgment made reopening necessary to avoid real injustice in exceptional circumstances.

Application dismissed. The court treated the application under CPR Part 52.17 as subject to a high threshold. Reopening had to be necessary to avoid real injustice and the circumstances had to be exceptional.

1. The allegations of procedural unfairness were rejected. The court had read the relevant documents, allowed substantial time for submissions and raised issues in the conventional manner. The comments attributed to Vos LJ reflected the trial judge’s findings that the appellants had behaved dishonestly and had rejected their explanations. The court agreed with those findings.
2. The court accepted one limited error. Vos LJ had apparently read paragraph 11 of the Amended Particulars of Claim as referring to the VSSA rather than the Viking Brokerage Agreement. That error could not affect the outcome. Ground 8 could not succeed once the appeal against the £1.4 million judgment on the section 175 claim had been dismissed. Even on the appellants’ construction, paragraphs 26 and 27 supported the relevant allegation and the reasoning in paragraphs 57 to 61 remained unaffected.
3. The appellants could not use the reopening application to reargue factual explanations which the trial judge had expressly rejected, particularly where those findings had not been appealed. There was no basis for concluding that the integrity of the litigation process had been undermined.
4. There was a pressing need for the litigation to be finalised, consistent with the dicta of the Chancellor in Lawal v Circle 33 Housing Trust [2014] EWCA Civ 1514 at paragraph 65. The circumstances were neither exceptional nor such as to make reopening necessary to avoid real injustice. Permission to appeal to the Supreme Court remained a possible route for challenging the earlier judgments.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): After the earlier appeal had been dismissed, the court refused permission to reopen it under CPR Part 52.17 and dismissed the application.
2. High Court of Justice, Chancery Division: The appellants had appealed from the judgment of Mrs Justice Rose, including the £1.4 million judgment on the section 175 claim. No citation for that judgment is stated in the judgment.