KB-2024-001295 - [2025] EWHC 3000 (KB)

After the CMC, the hearing of the claim was listed for 9 June 2025.

There were difficulties in serving D1 with the documents other than the claim form, as I explain further at [69]-[75] below.

D2 and D3 agreed to accept service of further documents by email. Accordingly, they were served with the bundle for the 9 June 2025 hearing (“the disposal hearing bundle”) on 24 March 2025 and the supplementary bundle for the same hearing on 28 May 2025. They were also sent Mr Pons’ skeleton argument by email.

D1 did not engage with the proceedings in any way until a few hours before the hearing on 9 June 2025, when an email was received by the court apparently from his mother. In it, Mrs O’Connor said that she was contacting the court with D1’s “full authority and consent”. The email made various points about service of the documents, expressed concern about the position of the victims in the US and referred to the legal advice D1 had been given. Most pertinently, Mrs O’Connor said in the email that D1 had “no objection to the assets which are the subject of the proceedings being seized”. She did not ask to attend the hearing or that the hearing be adjourned. However, she was offered the opportunity to attend the hearing and arrangements were quickly put in place for her to join remotely. I am grateful to the court staff for making those arrangements.