Jamous v Mercouris

An application to extend time for filing an appellant’s notice is approached with the same rigour as an application for relief from sanctions. The court applies the three-stage Mitchell/Denton approach: assess the seriousness and significance of the default, identify any good reason, and evaluate all the circumstances. Litigants in person remain required to comply with procedural rules; unfamiliarity, confusion about deadlines and the absence of legal representation do not ordinarily constitute good reasons. A late adjournment request based on ill-health should be supported by cogent medical evidence and is unlikely to serve a useful purpose where the asserted illness is litigation-related. The merits may be considered at the final stage only where the grounds are plainly very strong or very weak. Applying those principles, the extension was refused and the permission application did not fall to be determined.

Mr Tarik Jamous applied for an extension of time to file an Appellant’s Notice and for permission to appeal against an order of Master Davison dated 18 December 2018, by which his personal injury claim against Mr Alexander Mercouris stood struck out for failure to file a certificate concerning his capacity to conduct proceedings.

The Appellant’s Notice was filed approximately seven weeks late. Mr Jamous relied principally on an asserted misunderstanding concerning whether his appeal could be heard with his mother’s separate appeal. He also sought a late adjournment on grounds of ill-health and lack of representation. He did not attend the hearing or provide medical evidence. The central issues were whether the delay justified an extension and whether the hearing should be adjourned.

1. Adjournment. The late informal application to adjourn was refused. Although the court should be slow to refuse a first medical adjournment request by a litigant in person where the case has some prospect of success, the application must be supported by evidence. Stress caused by the litigation, without more, was insufficient, particularly where an adjournment was unlikely to improve the position. The request for time to find pro bono counsel was also inadequate because the hearing date had been fixed for several months.
2. Applicable test. Under [2014] EWCA Civ 1633, applications to extend time for filing an Appellant’s Notice are approached with the same rigour as applications for relief from sanctions. The three stages identified in [2014] EWCA Civ 906 apply: assess the seriousness and significance of the breach; consider why it occurred; and evaluate all the circumstances, including efficient and proportionate litigation and compliance with rules and orders.
3. The delay of roughly seven weeks was serious and significant. No good reason was established. Being unrepresented, misunderstanding the deadline, relying on an alleged oral indication by another judge, and wishing to avoid a further fee-exemption application did not excuse non-compliance. The repeated failures to comply with orders, the absence of a proper appeal bundle, the history and age of the proceedings, the modest value of the remaining claim, and the prejudice caused to the respondent weighed strongly against relief.
4. The merits could properly be considered because the proposed ground appeared to have some prima facie force: court-file material suggested that a hard copy certificate may have been filed by the deadline. However, important questions remained about whether it was filed in the required form, and the appellant had supplied insufficient evidence to resolve them. That limited merit did not outweigh the other circumstances.
5. The application for an extension of time was refused. Consequently, the application for permission to appeal did not fall to be determined, and the claim remained struck out under Master Davison’s order.

• High Court (Queen’s Bench Division): The court considered an application for an extension of time and permission to appeal against Master Davison’s order dated 18 December 2018. The extension was refused, so the permission application did not fall to be determined.