CA-2025-000983 - [2025] EWCA Civ 1457

The appellant’s application was determined without a hearing, as the appellant had requested. Judge Beard gave the following reasons for refusing to make the orders requested:

‘It appears to me that the request for hearings to be shortened [is] related to the claimant’s disabilities. However, I believe this request is because of a misunderstanding of the way in which appeals are conducted. The format is for the Appellant to present submissions on the four grounds of appeal explaining why he believes the judge was wrong to strike out the claim. This would normally be no more than 1 hour and 30 minutes and usually much shorter, thereafter the respondent would make their submission usually a similar amount of time. After this a judge would normally break to consider judgment and either then deliver judgment orally or if necessary allow the parties to leave after submissions are made and reserve the judgment. That is why these matters are listed for one day. There will be no live evidence or cross-examination in this appeal only documents which form the bundle will be considered and they will relate solely to grounds of appeal. On that basis it would not be in accordance with the overriding objective to split this hearing over two days which would be required by the claimant’s application to be separated by two weeks. Such a step would add to expense, would mean that other appeals could not be heard. Further I am not convinced that this adjustment would alleviate any specific disadvantage for the Appellant.

In terms of speech to text transcription, I do not consider that this is related to the listed disabilities. It appears to me to be connected to the Appellant’s language skills. As such the appointment of an interpreter is more in keeping with the request rather than transcription which would breach the no recording rules.’