Fox v Hall

LADY JUSTICE HALLETT: The applicant, Mr Kevin Fox, seeks permission to appeal the judgment of His Honour Judge Steven Davies QC dated 13 August 2014, by which Judge Davies rejected Mr Fox's claims that Michael Hall, the proposed respondent, was liable to pay him by way of assignment in respect of claims arising under an agreement from March 2002, known at the trial as the Wilson Agreement.

This is not the first litigation in which the Wilson Agreement has featured. The manner in which Mr Hall claims that Mr Fox has gone about seeking to enforce the claims under the assignment of the Wilson Agreement were the subject of a claim by Mr Hall against Mr Fox under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. In that case, His Honour Judge Seymour QC found against Mr Hall. The applicant has similarly made claims of harassment against the respondent under the Protection from Harassment Act.

Mr Fox, who has represented himself before me this afternoon, seeks permission to appeal on a number of grounds, and for the most part he has advanced those grounds with skill and moderation. In summary -- and I emphasise I am summarising them for the purposes of an ex tempore judgment -- in summary they amount to the following: Mr Fox accuses the judge of being biased against him, for example by excluding relevant evidence, for failing to remain impartial, for failing to ensure fairness and equality of treatment, for favouring one party, Mr Hall, by making submissions on Mr Hall's behalf.

This last complaint is a reference to the fact that during the course of the hearing the judge drew to the party's attention a very recent decision of the Court of Appeal in Crawford v Jenkins [2014] EWCA Civ 1035, which related to the question of whether or not witness immunity applied to complaints to the police. Given that complaints to the police featured very much in this litigation, and indeed the previous litigation, Mr Fox took exception to the judge bringing this to the parties' attention. In any event, Mr Fox argued that the decision in Crawford v Jenkins makes plain that the rule as to witness immunity should only be taken so far. Mr Fox complains that it was unfair to bring the rule into the equation at all, and that the judge then misapplied it, and it did not cover the conduct he alleged against Mr Hall. As he put it colloquially to me, an individual cannot just rely on general immunity and go around making erroneous or misleading complaints to the police.

Mr Fox's next complaint was that the judge erred in failing to categorise Mr Hall's conduct as fraudulent. He took me in his oral submissions through some of the evidence upon which he relied to make good his claim, but he produced more support for his argument in his written skeleton argument. It was his submission that Mr Hall's deliberate sabotaging of the implementation of the Wilson Agreement, by misrepresenting his intent and withholding information from shareholders, amounted to a clear case of fraud. Further, Mr Fox criticised the judge for failing to ignore and follow Judge Seymour's conclusions in the previous litigation, and that the judge was wrong to find that any claim here was barred for a number of reasons.

Mr Fox evidently understands a certain amount of the legal process, and I hope that he understands that I cannot give permission to appeal simply on the basis that the case went against him. I have done my best, given that Mr Fox is representing himself, to analyse his grounds and to see whether there is in truth anything in law which would support a ground of appeal. Having done so, and I appreciate this will come as a blow to Mr Fox, I regret that I can find nothing with a reasonable prospect of success in this court. Mr Fox has to go much further than merely stating there is an argument that the judge is wrong; he has to show that he has a good case, showing that the judge has for example ignored relevant evidence, or has reached conclusions that no reasonable judge could reach. As far as I can detect, Mr Fox is simply putting forward the arguments that he had put forward before the judge to advance his case.

The judge was not obliged on the evidence called before him to make findings of fraud. He was not obliged to follow precisely the conclusions of His Honour Judge Seymour. There were different issues at stake and different evidence called. He has not therefore infringed the issue estoppel rule. The judge was not obliged to find that the claim was not statute barred. The judge was perfectly entitled to find that section 32 did not apply.

For a number of reasons, this claim, on the judge's findings, failed. I have analysed the judge's findings to see if they were supported by the evidence or by sufficient reasons, and in my judgment they were and accordingly the application for permission to appeal in my judgment cannot possibly succeed, and therefore must be dismissed.