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England and Wales High Court (Queen's Bench Division) Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Queen's Bench Division) Decisions >> First Capital East Ltd v Plana & Anor [2015] EWHC 2982 (QB) (23 October 2015) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2015/2982.html Cite as: [2016] 1 WLR 1271, [2016] WLR 1271, [2015] EWHC 2982 (QB) |
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QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL |
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B e f o r e :
Sitting as a Judge of the High Court
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FIRST CAPITAL EAST LIMITED |
Applicant |
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- and - |
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ILMI PLANA ARSIM PLANA |
Respondents |
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Stephen Field (instructed by McLarty's Solicitors) for the 1st Respondent
Martin Hodgson (instructed by McLarty's Solicitors) for the 2nd Respondent
Hearing dates: 15 October 2015
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Crown Copyright ©
HHJ Peter Hughes QC :
Introduction
The Personal Injury Litigation
"If that explanation had been true and was consistent with the disabilities suggested by the medical reports and detailed in the schedule of loss, then what one sees in the surveillance evidence would not have taken place."
Subsequent events
"made a false representation to [the Applicants] which was and which he knew was or might be untrue or misleading, namely, that he exaggerated the injuries that he claimed to have suffered in an industrial accident on the 10th December 2007."
The CPR and Part 81.18(3)
"Proceedings for contempt of court may be brought against a person if he makes or causes to be made, a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth without an honest belief in its truth".
"A committal application in relation to a false statement of truth or disclosure statement in connection with proceedings in the County Court may be made only –
(a) with the permission of a single judge of the High Court; or
(b) by the Attorney General."
"i) A person who makes a statement verified with a statement of truth or a false disclosure statement is only guilty of contempt if the statement is false and the person knew it to be so when he made it.
ii) It must be in the public interest for proceedings to be brought. In deciding whether it is the public interest, the following factors are relevant:
a) The case against the alleged contemnor must be a strong case (there is an obvious need to guard carefully against the risk of allowing vindictive litigants to use such proceedings to harass persons against whom they have a grievance);
b) The false statements must have been significant in the proceedings;
c) The court should ask itself whether the alleged contemnor understood the likely effect of the statement and the use to which it would be put in the proceedings;
d) "[T]he pursuit of contempt proceedings in ordinary cases may have a significant effect by drawing the attention of the legal profession, and through it that of potential witnesses, to the dangers of making false statements. If the courts are seen to treat serious examples of false evidence as of little importance, they run the risk of encouraging witnesses to regard the statement of truth as a mere formality."
iii) The court must give reasons but be careful to avoid prejudicing the outcome of the substantive proceedings;
iv) Only limited weight should be attached to the likely penalty;
v) A failure to warn the alleged contemnor at the earliest opportunity of the fact that he may have committed a contempt is a matter that the court may take into account."
"2. For many years the courts have sought to underline how serious false and lying claims are to the administration of justice. False claims undermine a system whereby those who are injured as a result of the fault of their employer or a defendant can receive just compensation.
3. They undermine that system in a number of serious ways. They impose upon those liable for such claims the burden of analysis, the burden of searching out those claims which are justified and those claims which are unjustified. They impose a burden upon honest claimants and honest claims, when in response to those claims, understandably those who are liable are required to discern those which are deserving and those which are not.
4. Quite apart from that effect on those involved in such litigation is the effect upon the court. Our system of adversarial justice depends upon openness, upon transparency and above all upon honesty. The system is seriously damaged by lying claims. It is in those circumstances that the courts have on numerous occasions sought to emphasise how serious it is for someone to make a false claim, either in relation to liability or in relation to claims for compensation as a result of liability.
5. Those who make such false claims if caught should expect to go to prison. There is no other way to underline the gravity of the conduct. There is no other way to deter those who may be tempted to make such claims, and there is no other way to improve the administration of justice.
6. The public and advisors must be aware that, however easy it is to make false claims, either in relation to liability or in relation to compensation, if found out the consequences for those tempted to do so will be disastrous. They are almost inevitably in the future going to lead to sentences of imprisonment, which will have the knock-on effect that the lives of those tempted to behave in that way, of both themselves and their families, are likely to be ruined.
7. But the prevalence of such temptation and of those who succumb to that temptation is such that nothing else but such severe condemnation is likely to suffice."
"The message as I would see it is that in future it is vital that these cases are dealt with with urgency and with speed, so that the all-important message of deterrence, the all-important process by which it is brought home to false complainants that the likely consequence is prison, can be underlined."
The Merits - Discussion
"14. In domestic law contempt proceedings and criminal charges have different purposes. As far as the proceedings for contempt are concerned, as Lady Justice Hale said in Hale v Tanner, there are two objectives. Firstly, the court has to mark the court's disapproval of disobedience to its order; secondly, it has to consider how best to secure future compliance with the order. Those are two considerations which are quite different and separate from the considerations which are raised by a criminal charge. Unlike contempt proceedings, which are essentially proceedings between the court seeking to enforce its order and the contemnor, criminal proceedings are between the public and are concerned with different considerations.
15. The essential feature of a criminal charge is the attempt to protect public order; the necessity to punish offenders and in so doing both deter the offender and others from committing offences and therefore provide protection for the public. Incidentally, of course in relation to the sentencing process, there will be considerations relating to the rehabilitation of the offender. But the important feature of a criminal charge is the fact that it is seeking to ensure that there is proper sanction for those who break the law. Not a court's order, but the law.
16. It seems to me in those circumstances that there can in domestic law be no justification for concluding that merely because someone has, on a given set of facts, been found guilty of contempt of court, that should in any way preclude the appropriate prosecuting authorities from bringing criminal proceedings for the purposes to which I have referred.
17. It is not only those considerations which need to be emphasised. Further, a criminal conviction is a public sanction which has consequences which are of significance in relation to the protection of the public for the future. Further, it may or may not be that, in view of the considerations which affected the court when dealing with a breach of an injunction, the way in which the court dealt with that matter was appropriate in considering the public interest so far as punishment is concerned. By that I mean it may or may not be the case that given the facts of the particular case here, three months' imprisonment would be an appropriate criminal sanction. One can envisage cases in which the court dealing with the contempt application will deal with the matter in a wholly different way from the way in which the criminal courts may consider appropriate."
The Relevance of the 1st Respondent's Acquittal
Double Jeopardy - Discussion
"The underlying idea, one that is deeply ingrained in at least the Anglo-American system of jurisprudence, is that the State with all its resources and power should not be allowed to make repeated attempts to convict an individual for an alleged offense, thereby subjecting him to embarrassment, expense and ordeal and compelling him to live in a continuing state of anxiety and insecurity as well as enhancing the possibility that even though innocent he may be found guilty."
Conclusions