David W. Flavell Consultants Ltd v Uddin
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE RIMER
Areas of Law
- Civil Procedure
- Contract Law
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
David W. Flavell Consultants Limited sought an appeal extension nearly three years late in a £32,815 dispute over property inspection services. The trial judge had dismissed the claim, finding the contract to be against public policy. The appeal was denied for lateness, lack of merit, and no impact from new evidence.
Judgment
Lord Justice Rimer :
This is a renewed application for permission to appeal. The applicant, the claimant in the court below, is David W. Flavell Consultants Limited, which has been represented by its director, Mr Flavell. The respondent, defendant in the court below, is Kamar Uddin, who practises as Res Ipsa Solicitors. The order under challenge was made in Birmingham County Court by His Honour Judge Robert Owen QC on 28 July 2010, but amended on an uncertain date in early September 2010. The applicant’s appellant’s notice was filed on 2 July 2013. The time for appealing against the judge’s order probably expired on about 18 August 2010 and so the appellant’s notice is nearly three years out of time.
Floyd LJ, on the papers on 19 December 2013, refused permission to appeal on the grounds that the applicant’s proposed challenge to the judge’s adverse factual findings had no real prospect of success, and that the fresh evidence that the applicant wishes to adduce would not affect the outcome of the appeal. He did not deal separately with the prior question of whether the applicant’s time for appealing should be extended. He may perhaps have thought that it would be less painful for the applicant for its permission application to be denied on substantive grounds rather than on a procedural one. Nevertheless the procedural point is important. Time limits imposed by the Civil Procedure Rules mean what they say and are expected to be complied with. They apply as much to litigants in person (and the applicant has been so acting, via Mr Flavell, since the trial in July 2010) as to those represented by lawyers.
The applicant’s claim was for £32,815 for services rendered to Mr Uddin between March 2007 and October 2008. The services were property inspections and resultant reports in housing repair cases that were carried out by Mr Flavell. The claim failed because the judge found on the facts that the respondent’s only liability to pay fees to the applicant was under a legally objectionable conditional fee agreement (‘CFA’) made on 6 June 2007 that offended public policy and rendered the applicant’s claim unenforceable.
I do not propose to explain or summarise the judge’s findings, of which the applicant will be well aware. Suffice it to say that he found Mr Flavell to be a witness whose ‘evidence was wholly unreliable and in my judgment worthless in the absence of independent support from an alternative credible source.’ The judge rejected Mr Flavell’s