CA-2024-002323 - [2025] EWCA Civ 1168

Both the deputy district judge and the judge were right to reject the Appellant’s claim. The application for an interim injunction on Form N16A – even though it lacked any merit – was nonetheless properly issued. Once issued, it provided a proper basis for the court to exercise its jurisdiction in all respects in relation to that application, including determination of all ancillary issues. It would in my judgment be unconscionable for the Appellant to be able to profit from his actions in issuing a misconceived application without facing the financial and other consequences of doing so.

I recognise that if I were wrong about this, the Respondent would not be without a remedy; she would simply have to launch a new Part 8 claim. However, for the reasons set out above, this step is not required and the existing proceedings should now be listed for further case management in the county court.

For the reasons outlined above, I would dismiss the appeal.

I agree that this appeal should be dismissed for the reasons given by Cobb LJ, which materially endorse the reasons clearly given by the judges in the courts below. I would only wish to highlight my particular agreement with two points already made by my Lord. First, I agree with and endorse the observation that the Appellant’s case involves an affront to common sense. That alone should make the courts at any level intensely reluctant to accede to the Appellant’s case unless compelled by inescapable logic or binding prior authority to do so. As my Lord has explained, and as the judges in the courts below clearly recognised, neither exists in this case. Second, the concession rightly made by the Appellant in this court that the court below “had the power to make the interim injunction on 4 Aug 2023 and had, as a corollary, a jurisdiction to discharge it on 29 March 2024” is fatal to the appeal. I would have been content to dismiss the appeal on that basis alone; but I am grateful to my Lord for his much fuller exposition of the errors in the Appellant’s argument.

I too endorse the observation that to have allowed this second appeal would be an affront to common sense. As Stuart-Smith LJ observes, only if compelled to do so would a court have acceded to the Appellant’s case. I would also add that this court is acutely conscious of the intolerable position in which the Respondent has found herself as a consequence of this litigation and the protracted appeal process.