Benmusa (No 2), Re

An application may be struck out where its factual basis is self-evidently impossible and the claim is therefore wholly nonsensical. The court may rely on judicial notice of public-record facts to test the internal plausibility of the allegations. A document submitted in support of such an application does not require a hearing where the application can be determined summarily on the papers.

The applicant made a second paper application seeking to unseal the will of the late Princess Margaret. Her first application had previously been struck out in Re Benmusa [2017] EWHC 494 (Fam). The second application was accompanied by a short statement and a death certificate relating to a woman whom the applicant said was her aunt. The statement asserted that the applicant was Princess Margaret’s child and heir to the throne. The central issue was whether the renewed application disclosed any coherent or legally sustainable basis for the relief sought.

1. The application was struck out. It was properly dealt with without a hearing because its essential allegations were incapable of providing a coherent basis for the relief sought.
2. The court was entitled to take judicial notice of public-record facts concerning Princess Margaret’s parentage and family history. Her father was King George VI, born in 1895, and her mother was Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, born in 1900. They married in 1923.
3. Those facts made the applicant’s account self-evidently impossible. A woman born in 1904 could not have been the elder sister of the applicant’s mother if the applicant’s mother was Princess Margaret.
4. The statement was consequently characterised as a farrago of delusional nonsense. The claim was struck out without further investigation.

The judgment records that a previous application had been struck out on 14 March 2017 in Re Benmusa [2017] EWHC 494 (Fam). No appeal is described.