Ahmed Mahmoud El-Tawil v Megan Larrinaga & Ors

An appeal may be struck out for failing to comply with a peremptory order, particularly where the appellant provides no satisfactory explanation or supporting evidence. The court may also strike out a pleading that discloses no legally recognisable cause of action or amounts to an abuse of process. A claimant cannot use proceedings in their own name to advance, indirectly, another person’s regulatory or appellate challenge. Where the underlying appeal has no real prospect of success, reinstating an appeal struck out for procedural non-compliance serves no useful purpose.

The appellant applied to set aside an order striking out his appeal against Master Davison’s order maintaining the strike-out of his claim. The underlying claim was brought against members of a Medical Practitioners Tribunal, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service and the General Medical Council. The Master had concluded that the amended pleading disclosed no legitimate cause of action for the appellant and appeared to advance his brother’s case in an attempt to circumvent a restriction on his brother’s litigation.

The appeal was later struck out after the appellant failed to file an appeal bundle by a peremptory deadline and filed non-compliant grounds. The central issues were whether that strike-out should be set aside and whether the underlying appeal had any real prospect of success.

1. The application to set aside the order striking out the appeal was dismissed. The respondents’ costs were summarily assessed at £4,891.20, payable within 14 days.

2. Under Civil Procedure Rules 1998, r 52.21, an appeal may succeed only where the lower court’s decision was wrong or unjust because of a serious procedural or other irregularity.

3. The appeal had been struck out because the appellant failed to comply with paragraphs 1 and 2 of a peremptory order requiring an appeal bundle by a specified deadline. The order warned that further extensions were unlikely and required specific medical evidence for any further indulgence. The appellant supplied neither a satisfactory explanation nor the required evidence. His revised grounds also failed to comply with the requirement for concise grounds. The strike-out was therefore properly made.

4. The underlying claim was properly struck out under Civil Procedure Rules 1998, r 3.4(2)(a) and (b). The amended pleading did not disclose a legitimate cause of action for the appellant and was an oblique attempt to advance matters concerning his brother’s regulatory and criminal proceedings. That amounted to an abuse of process and did not disclose a legally recognisable claim.

5. The appellant’s brother had a statutory right of appeal which he had not pursued. The appellant could not circumvent that position by advancing the same matters through proceedings in his own name. Even if the procedural strike-out were set aside, the underlying appeal had no real prospect of success and there was no purpose in reinstating it.

• High Court (King’s Bench Division): The appellant’s application to set aside the order of Sir Stephen Stewart dated 11 October 2024, which struck out the appeal for non-compliance, was dismissed.
• High Court: Master Davison’s order dated 10 October 2023 maintained the strike-out of the underlying claim under Civil Procedure Rules 1998, r 3.4(2)(a) and (b).