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June 30, 2009
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
Judgment
Lord Justice Ward:
This is a father’s application for permission to appeal orders made by HHJ Peter Hughes QC, sitting as a judge of the High Court on 20 April of this year. The main battle joined before him was as to the mother’s plans to move from the North of England (Cumbria/Northumberland) to Sussex, in order to take up a further course of study at Sussex University. The judge acceded to her request and permitted that relocation, but also put a restraint upon the father’s making applications in respect of this little girl, who is some six years old, without leave of the court, and imposed that restraint for three years.
I have decided, albeit with a little reluctance, to adjourn this application to be heard on notice to the respondent, with the appeal to follow if permission is granted. I do so for these reasons. Firstly, with reference to the section 91(14) restriction on leave to apply to the court, whilst I see the eminent good sense of the judge’s view that a period of peace and quiet would be good for everybody in this case, and I suspect for the father himself nothing would please him more than to have an end to this endless litigation, what troubles me is that the judge appears, from what I read in the papers, to have reached that conclusion himself and put it forward in a draft judgment which was to be handed down, and which the father was only able to see on the Friday before the case returned to court on Monday. He is a litigant in person and, although obviously intelligent, he does need to have a fair opportunity to take advice in order to meet an unexpected argument, and it is arguable that the procedure followed by the judge did not afford him that fair opportunity. For that reason, I would have been inclined, had that been the only matter, to grant permission on that narrow point.
As for the relocation, which is of course the more important matter from the father’s point of view, this was a sympathetic judgment from a judge who had the great advantage, denied to the Court of Appeal, of seeing and hearing the parties and forming his own conclusions, many of which formed the basis of his ultimate judgment. As I have explained to the father, appealing findings of fact of that kind is a very difficult task in which to succeed. But I will adjourn the matter, so that the father can first of all try to refine his arguments and select what he truly considers to be the strongest of his reasons for appealing this judgment.
He is able
AI Generated Summary
Lord Justice Ward considered the father’s application for permission to appeal from orders of HHJ Peter Hughes QC made on 20 April. The High Court permitted the mother to relocate from Cumbria/Northumberland to Sussex to study at Sussex University and imposed a three-year section 91(14) restriction requiring the father to obtain leave before making applications concerning their six-year-old child. Ward adjourned the permission application to be heard on notice to the respondent, noting concerns that the section 91(14) proposal emerged in a draft judgment shortly before the hearing, limiting the litigant-in-person father’s opportunity to respond. He acknowledged the difficulty of appealing factual findings but accepted it was arguable that the judge failed to carry out a true balancing exercise comparing the parents’ plans, including the father’s flexible childcare arrangements and questions around the mother’s study schedule and reliance on the grandmother. A stay was granted pending a half-day renewed hearing scheduled for 15 July, with liberty to apply.