[2025] EWHC 2485 (Ch)

In the meantime, in December 2024 and January 2025, the first four of the five applications with which I am concerned were issued, two by Iftikhar and two by Vaqar. Three of the four were issued in the 2019 English Partnership Claim, and one in the 1987 English Partnership Action.

On 9 March 2025 Vaqar applied to the High Court for an interim injunction to restrain and/or for a stay of enforcement of the possession orders. On 14 March 2025, Leech J dismissed that application as totally without merit. Vaqar applied to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal against the order of Leech J dated 14 March 2025. On 30 June 2025, permission to appeal was granted, but on terms that the appeal should be postponed until after the determination of the Partnership Proceedings (whether by means of the present applications or otherwise).

Vaqar also sought to appeal to the High Court a second time against the possession order made by HHJ Gerald in 2022. The appellant’s notice was struck out by Richards J on 17 March 2025, on the basis that it was an abuse of the process of the court, given that there had already been one appeal to the High Court (and a further appeal to the Court of Appeal) in relation to this order. It also involved a collateral attack on the decision of the Court of Appeal. Then Vaqar applied to the Court of Appeal to re-open the earlier appeal under CPR rule 52.30. That application was refused by Zacaroli LJ on 27 March 2025.

On 1 May 2025 the listing office notified the parties that the four applications in the Partnership Proceedings would be heard on 14-15 May 2025, before HHJ Gerald, who was listed to be sitting in the High Court at that time. On 6 May 2025 Vaqar applied for an order that HHJ Gerald recuse himself and that the applications listed before him for 14-15 May 2025 be vacated and relisted before another judge. On the same day, Iftikhar issued the fifth application (in the 2019 English Partnership Claim) to lift any automatic stay on that claim, so far as might be necessary to deal with the first two applications listed.

As already stated above, on 16 May 2025 HHJ Gerald delivered a judgment in which he recused himself, and ordered that the hearing of the now five applications be vacated, to be relisted with expedition. Those are the five applications which were then relisted before and heard by me on 29-30 July 2025. In the meantime, an application for permission to appeal against the order of HHJ Gerald of 16 May 2025 was refused by the Court of Appeal on paper on 3 July 2025.