BL-2021-002235 - [2025] EWHC 2367 (Ch)

In the interval between the judgment handed down on 1 August 2025 and the hearing on 5 September 2025, the respondent made two further applications. The first was an application by notice dated 13 August 2025, for an order setting aside the order of 5 April 2022, on the basis that it had been obtained by means of a fraud on the court. In addition to the evidence served and filed by the respondent at the time of that application, the respondent filed further evidence in support of that application as late as 2 September 2025.

There was also an email sent to the court on 3 September 2025, apparently by the respondent’s son Lukas Stanford, purportedly in his capacity “as trustee” of the DS Family Trust. I had previously held Lukas Stanford not to have been validly so appointed as such trustee, because of a patent failure to follow the relevant provisions of the trust instrument: see [2025] EWHC 2284 (Ch), [21]-[23]. However, he claimed now to have become the duly appointed trustee of that trust, by virtue of further documents, to which he referred, but which he did not give himself the trouble of exhibiting to the court. In that email, he expressed his unconditional support for the application of his father, the respondent. The email takes the matter no further.

The second application was one by notice dated 4 September 2025, for an order striking out the applicant’s contempt application, on the grounds that no resolution of the board of the claimant had been exhibited in evidence authorising the making of the application.