Ameyaw v McGoldrick & Ors

The court may reconsider a judgment only while the order remains unsealed. Once the order has been sealed, substantial challenge must ordinarily proceed by appeal. Before sealing, reconsideration remains governed by the overriding obligation to deal with the case justly, having regard to the finality of judgments and the need to prevent a reconsideration application becoming a reargument of the merits.

An oral hearing may be directed or dispensed with where the nature of the issues, the parties’ positions and the interests of justice make that procedure fair and proportionate. A stay pending a proposed appeal requires the court to balance the risk of injustice to each party.

The claimant applied to vary parts of an order made on 3 July 2020, to obtain oral hearings of applications concerning preliminary issues and strike-out or summary judgment, to invoke the Barrell jurisdiction in relation to an earlier judgment, and to stay proceedings pending an intended appeal against a recusal judgment.

The defendants agreed that the strike-out and summary judgment application should be heard orally. The claimant’s application to reconsider the earlier judgment was made after the relevant order had been sealed. The central issues were whether the order should be varied, whether the court retained jurisdiction to make substantial amendments to the judgment, whether the application was totally without merit, and whether proceedings should be stayed.

1. Variation of order. The defendants’ strike-out and summary judgment application was to be listed for an oral hearing. Paragraph 4 of the 3 July Order was set aside, and paragraph 5 was varied accordingly. The preliminary issues remained to be determined on the papers because no application to vary paragraph 3 had been made and the claimant had previously sought that procedure.
2. Barrell jurisdiction. Following Re L-B [2013] UKSC 8; [2013] 1 WLR 634, the court retained jurisdiction to reconsider its judgment only until the order was drawn up and sealed under CPR 40.2(2)(b). The order had already been sealed. The court therefore lacked jurisdiction to make substantial amendments. In any event, reconsideration applications must respect the public interest in finality and cannot substitute for an appeal or provide an opportunity to reargue the merits.
3. The principles stated in Robinson v Fernsby [2003] EWCA Civ 1820 supported the conclusion that material alteration after judgment is exceptional in practice, while recognising that a palpable error may sometimes be corrected before sealing. The application was wholly without merit.
4. Totally without merit. The application to invoke the Barrell jurisdiction was certified as totally without merit because it was bound to fail. No civil restraint order was made. The application concerning documents was not so certified because some aspects had not been devoid of merit.
5. Stay. Applying the balance of injustice approach in Hammond Suddard Solicitors v Agrichem [2002] CP Rep 21, the court refused a stay. No permission application or formulated appeal grounds had been provided, the proposed appeal appeared weak, and the defendants would suffer prejudice from further delay.
6. The claimant’s injunction application was directed to be heard on the same day as the strike-out and summary judgment application. The Barrell application was dismissed and certified as totally without merit; the stay application was refused.

First-instance procedural decision. The judgment records that an earlier judgment and a recusal judgment in the same litigation had been delivered by the same court, but those decisions are excluded as same-litigation judgments.