BL-2021-002235 - [2025] EWHC 1966 (Ch)

What the respondent did do was to make an application by notice dated 21 July 2025 for a stay of the contempt application. This application reached me on 22 July 2025, the day before the hearing. It was supported by the affidavit to which I have already referred, dated 18 July 2025. This made a number of points. They included a submission that the respondent had not been served in accordance with his “lawful enrolled identity”. This appears to have been a reference to the fact that on 11 March 2024 the respondent executed a deed poll to evidence a change in his name from “Kevin Gerald Stanford” to “Kevin-gerald Stanford”. It appears that this deed has been enrolled in the King’s Bench Division of the High Court. I will return to this later.

A further submission was that the sealed order of Leech J dated 11 July 2025 had been addressed to “KEVIN-GERALD STANFORD”, which is a private unlimited company incorporated in the United Kingdom. Accordingly, said the respondent, there had been no service on “lawful identity Kevin-gerald Stanford”. A third submission was that the order of 5 April 2022 had been obtained by fraud, in that some of the evidence filed on behalf of the claimant had been fraudulent and that this had not been tested, because this was a claim tried under CPR Part 8, rather than Part 7. The problem with this, of course, is that the deputy judge in 2022 had considered the respondent’s allegations of fraud, but had expressly rejected them, and there was no appeal. (I set out the relevant paragraphs, [74]-[76], earlier in this judgment.)

The application notice asked that the application be dealt with on paper, pursuant to CPR rule 23.8, which provides in part:

“(1)

The court may deal with an application without a hearing if—

(a)

the parties agree the terms of the order sought;

(b)

the parties agree to dispense with a hearing; or

(c)

the court does not consider that a hearing would be appropriate.”

At the hearing I pointed out that this rule was permissive, in enabling the court to depart from the default position, which was a hearing in court. It was not mandatory, and did not confer a right on a litigant to insist on a “paper hearing”. It was not suggested to me that the parties had agreed (a) the terms of the order sought or (b) to dispense with a hearing. As for (c), on receiving the application the day before, I had considered that it would be more appropriate for the application for a stay to be dealt with at a hearing already arranged for the next day. Amongst other things, this would enable debate between the parties in real time. My decision was communicated to the parties.

The respondent buttressed his application with further documents, including an email sent to the court on the morning of the hearing. In part it said the following:

“For the avoidance of doubt, my N244 application dated 21 July 2025 was submitted for paper determination under CPR 23.8. It raises matters that are independent of the contempt application, to which I have never been lawfully joined under CPR 19.4 or served in accordance with CPR 81.8(1)(a).

I respectfully maintain that it would be procedurally improper and a potential violation of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights for the Court to collapse or dispose of that application within the contempt hearing, or to treat my non-attendance at that hearing as submission in relation to the N244.

A formal Judicial Notice titled “Judicial Notice of Non-Joinder, Statutory Classification, and Risk of Unlawful Enforcement under POCA 2002” was filed earlier today via CE-File and is being served on all parties. It preserves the procedural and evidential record in full.”

As I have already said, the respondent did not appear at the hearing before me, and neither was he represented. I could have dealt with the application by saying that, as neither he nor any representative was present to make the application, it should be dismissed. Instead, I took the course of reading the documents put forward by the respondent, and hearing Mr Valentin KC for the applicant. Thereafter, I gave an extempore judgment, dismissing the application on its merits, and setting out my reasons.