Paul Dean Davies v Liberty Place (Sheepcote Street) Management Co
2014
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
UK
CORAM
- MR JUSTICE LEGGATT
Areas of Law
- Civil Procedure
2014
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
UK
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
Mr. Justice Leggatt presided over an appeal regarding the refusal to admit late witness statements. Initially, Judge Worster had refused to allow the statements based on the Mitchell v News Group Newspapers Ltd criteria. Mr. Justice Leggatt ruled that the application did not require relief from sanctions as defined by CPR 3.9 and that Ms. Penny's statement should be admitted due to its significance. The ruling emphasized proper interpretation of CPR rules and judicious consideration of evidence significance.
JUDGMENT
PAUL DEAN DAVIES– v – LIBERTY PLACE (SHEEPCOTE STREET) MANAGEMENT CO
JUDGMENT
MR JUSTICE LEGGATT: This second part of the defendant’s appeal relates to an order made by his Honour Judge Worster on 23 January 2014 by which he refused permission to serve further witness statements. The chronology, briefly, is that an order for directions was made on 23 July 2013 which contained a direction that witness statements were to be exchanged by 4pm on 4 November 2013. The order also included a reminder that the court may refuse to admit as evidence witness statements which fail to comply with the requirements of the Civil Procedure Rules and that costs sanctions may be imposed. As part of the same order, disclosure was ordered to be given by 7 October 2013.
In the event, those dates were not adhered to in that I am told that some documents were disclosed by the claimant only on 30 October 2013 and a short extension of time was mutually agreed for the exchange of witness statements until 8 November 2013. Witness statements were exchanged on that day. However, 10 days later, on 18 November 2013 (a date which in the order for directions had been set as the date for filing pre-trial checklists) the defendant issued an application (foreshadowed by a letter dated 15 November 2013) to rely on a further witness statement from Ms Rhiannon Penny. This additional evidence is potentially of considerable significance to the defendant’s case at trial since Ms Penny recounts in her statement dealings that she says she had with various directors of the claimant company from which it was clear that they well knew that the defendant was conducting a business from his flat.
In addition to Ms Penny’s statement, a further witness statement from the defendant himself was served on 27 November 2013 and an application was also made to rely on that statement. I should also mention that at the time when all this was happening, the pleadings had not in fact closed because a counterclaim had been served at the same time as the defence and a reply and defence to counterclaim was not served by the claimant until 18 December 2013.
The original trial window started at the end of November 2013 but the effect of the application to rely on additional evidence, the application for security for costs which the defendant also made and which was the subject of the first part of this appeal, and the fact that the statements of case had still not been completed, was that the trial window had