Property Services LDN Limited v Laverstock Management Corporation Limited

A first-instance judge has no jurisdiction to revisit or set aside an order made by another judge of coordinate jurisdiction. A party dissatisfied with a refusal to adjourn, or with the discharge of an injunction, must use the appellate route rather than seek to obtain the same relief through a fresh application. An attempt to circumvent the earlier order through a procedural application is impermissible. The application was therefore refused and certified as totally without merit.

Property Services LDN Limited applied to dismiss an application by the defendant’s administrators and receivers, principally because the application notice and supporting bundle had allegedly not been served in accordance with the Civil Procedure Rules 1998.

The underlying proceedings concerned injunctions relating to four properties charged to lenders. Kerr J had discharged an injunction and refused an adjournment on 24 May 2022, while adjourning other relief. The claimant then applied to the High Court to set aside or circumvent that order and reinstate the injunction. The central issue was whether this court had jurisdiction to revisit matters which had been, or could have been, raised before Kerr J.

1. Application refused. The court had no jurisdiction to entertain the claimant’s application.
2. The alleged defects in service and the short notice of the hearing were matters which the claimant had the opportunity to raise before Kerr J. They had either been raised and rejected, or had not been raised, in which event the claimant had chosen not to advance them through its legal representatives.
3. This court was not an appellate court from Kerr J. Any challenge to his refusal to adjourn, or to his discharge of the injunction, had to be pursued in the Court of Appeal. A fresh application designed to obtain the same relief through the back door was not a proper procedure.
4. The claimant also had no jurisdictional basis for revisiting Kerr J’s order or reinstating the injunction. A separate application to reinstate the injunction had already been refused, and the properties had been auctioned or were in the process of sale.
5. The application was certified as having been made totally without merit.

The judgment describes earlier orders made by Moulder J, HHJ Lickley QC and Kerr J in the same proceedings. It does not state that the present application was an appeal from any of those orders.