Vucicevic & Anor v Aleksic & Ors

The slip rule permits correction only where an order fails to give effect to the court’s actual intention because of a genuine accidental error or omission. It cannot be used to introduce new information, revisit the issues decided, or add a provision resulting from second or additional thoughts. The court may not certify facts as having been decided when they were neither in issue nor determined. Procedural fairness also prevents a substantive alteration being made without notice to the other parties and on evidence they have not seen.

The first claimant applied without notice under CPR rule 40.12 to obtain a certificate concerning a Montenegrin property. The certificate would have included detailed ownership, title and registration particulars said to be necessary for recognition and enforcement in Montenegro. Those particulars had been obtained after the original Part 8 proceedings and had not been before the court when it made orders in 2017.

The claimant relied on the slip-rule principles discussed in Priness Folaremi Ajongbola Santos-Albert v Ochi [2018] EWHC 1277 (Ch). The central issue was whether the requested certificate corrected an accidental omission or instead sought a new decision.

1. Application dismissed. CPR rule 40.12 permits the court to correct an accidental slip or omission so that an order conforms with the court’s actual intention. The rule is not confined by the size or financial significance of the correction. Its essential limits are that the error must be genuine and accidental, and that the court must not use the rule to have second or additional thoughts or to add a provision not contemplated at the hearing. This principle was adopted from Bristol-Myers Squibb v Baker Norton Pharmaceuticals (No 2) [2001] RPC 45 and applied as stated in Priness Folaremi Ajongbola Santos-Albert v Ochi [2018] EWHC 1277 (Ch).
2. The 2017 orders resolved the legal uncertainty arising from the deceased’s will. They did not decide the precise cadastral, title or registration details of the Montenegrin property, because those matters were not in issue and no evidence about them had been adduced. Their later discovery was therefore not an accidental omission from the order. A certificate stating those details would amount to a new decision, not a correction.
3. The application was also procedurally defective in substance. The proposed certificate relied on new evidence and would have been made without notice to the other parties. Minimum standards of justice required notice and an opportunity to respond.
4. By way of observation, the judge noted that amendments to a statement of case after judgment but before an order may exceptionally be permitted, citing Stewart v Engel [2000] 1 WLR 2268. An appeal with fresh evidence would face the requirements referred to in CPR rule 52.21(2), Ladd v Marshall [1954] 1 WLR 1489 and Terluk v Berezovsky [2011] EWCA Civ 1534. A fresh Part 8 claim for declaratory relief concerning the property’s identification details might therefore be possible.

The judgment records earlier first-instance proceedings before the same judge, culminating in orders dated 31 July 2017 and 16 November 2017 and judgments dated 20 September and 10 October 2017. The present application sought correction of those orders under CPR rule 40.12.