Maughan v Wilmot

Today, listed before me are three applications by Viki Maughan, whom I shall refer to as "the wife" even though she and the respondent were divorced many years ago, and one application by the respondent, whom I shall refer to as "the husband" for the same reason.

The wife's applications are:

The husband applied on 28^th March 2014 for orders to strike out the freezing order and to suspend or stay all orders in this case, including the material orders for child maintenance. His application (which had been received in draft on 21 February 2014) was, by notice issued by the court dated 18^th March 2014, listed to be heard today.

The wife's three applications are listed to be heard today by virtue of my order dated 20^th March 2014.

The husband has been duly served by email, as the orders have provided for, with my order of 20^th March 2014, and he has unquestionably received the notice dated 18^th March 2014 in relation to his own application 2014 as the copy of that within the bundle at section A, p.50 has his own writing on it with these words:

This morning I received a letter from the husband dated 10^th April 2014. That same letter, but bearing a different date, namely 11^th April 2014, has been sent by email to the wife's solicitors and is in the bundle. The letter reads:

If the husband wished to apply for an adjournment of the four matters which are listed before me today then it was incumbent on him to apply under Part 18 for an adjournment. An application under Part 18 requires at least seven days' notice to be given and must be supported by evidence or verified by a statement of truth. There is no evidence at all in the husband's letter which I could treat as satisfying the requirements of Rule 18, which explains to me why neither he nor counsel can attend the hearing today.

In these circumstances I decline to treat his letter of 10^th April 2014 as a valid application for an adjournment. I am satisfied that he has had ample notice of this hearing and I direct that it shall proceed. I refuse his application for an adjournment.

I now turn, first, to the husband's application dated 28^th March 2014, which had been accepted by the court on 18^th March and has been listed for today as I have previously explained.

The application has three grounds to it. It says, first, that the freezing order of 6^th December 2013 should be struck out because the order made by Ryder J (section F, p.22) which is dated 27^th February 2013 but which is sealed on 14^th March 2013, because, in the words of Captain Wilmot: "The Judgment orders no such thing as alleged by the solicitors for the petitioner."

The basis of Captain Wilmot's first allegation is that the order goes wider than the terms of the relatively short Judgment issued by the Judge. However, that is to misunderstand the judicial process. An order will very often go wider than the terms of a Judgment and will reflect Rulings made in the proceedings along the way. In this case the Judge made a number of Rulings along the way which were not then reiterated in his Judgment. However, it was, of course, appropriate and necessary that those Rulings were reflected in the Judge's order. I have been given a clip of correspondence between Ryder J's clerk and Mr. Swift in relation to the drawing up and perfection of the order. For these purposes I need only refer to the email from the Judge's temporary clerk dated 6^th March 2013, which reads:

Having explained these elementary facts it is completely plain that the allegation made by Captain Wilmot is totally meritless. The suggestion that the order is, in some way, a forgery, not authentic or bona fide, has no basis whatsoever. Accordingly, I proceed on the basis, inevitably, that the order made by Ryder J, dated 27^th February 2013 and sealed on 14^th March 2013, is a valid order and that all the matters which are ordered in it were validly made. In those circumstances the first basis of Captain Wilmot's application is denied by me.

The second is this: in his statement in support of his application he says in paras. 19 and 20 that he has discovered that the entirety of the sum paid in maintenance, which includes child maintenance over the last 15 years, which he says is £330,000, has not gone to his former wife and children but, in fact, has gone to the wife's solicitors, Thomson Snell & Passmore. Even if this were true, that would not be a basis for setting aside any orders. It might be a basis for variation of future liability, but no such application has been made. It is, in my view, a completely misconceived basis on which to mount a challenge to the validity of the existing orders to suggest that the wife, who acts in the form of a de facto trustee for child maintenance, has, in fact, used the maintenance for other purposes. The court does not stand as some kind of policing official as to how child maintenance is deployed. But, beyond those statements of principle is the fact that there is no evidence to support Captain Wilmot's allegation. Mere assertion in paras. 19 and 20 do not come anywhere near establishing the veracity of his allegation. For these reasons I reject as meritless his second basis of challenge as expressed in the application notice.

The third is this: from paras. 21 to the conclusion of the statement he reiterates complaints that he has made repeatedly to various Judges that the wife's solicitor, Miss Judd, and her counsel, Mr. Swift, are corrupt. He alleges that they have acted contrary to their professional duties. He alleges that they have acted fraudulently. He alleges they have been guilty of forging documents and corrupting the process of justice. These are not new allegations, but are allegations that have been made repeatedly in the past by Captain Wilmot and which have been repeatedly rejected by the court.

The most recent example of the rejection of these allegations is to be found in the very clear Judgment of Lloyd LJ dated as recently as 25^th July 2013 when Captain Wilmot was represented by counsel on his three applications for permission to appeal various orders. The learned Lord Justice goes through in some considerable detail the nature of the allegations made by Captain Wilmot which have included, as I say, allegations of corruption against the wife's legal team. There had been earlier rejections made by Ryder J of similar allegations.

In my judgment, having looked at the papers carefully, it is clear to me that these allegations are completely baseless. However, I would go further and say that in circumstances where they have already been categorically rejected by the court, they are now the subject of the principle of res judicata and it is an abuse for Captain Wilmot to try to reiterate them before me. Therefore, for these reasons his third basis of challenge, as expressed in his application notice, is denied by me and accordingly his application is rejected and I certify it to have been, from first to last, totally without merit.

Of the three applications made by the wife I now deal with the application for receivership, and the application to extend the freezing order. An application for a receiver is an ancient remedy available to the court when deploying powers of enforcement, and although it was original an equitable remedy it was put on a statutory footing at the time of the great fusion of law and equity in the late 19^th century and it is now to be found in s.37 of the re-named Senior Courts Act 1981.

Generally speaking, a party would only apply for a receiver to be appointed as a course of last resort for reasons that hardly need to be spelt out. Receivership, as a process, is inevitably expensive because the receiver is usually an accountant charging hourly rates of some size. However, in this case, the default of the husband, in relation to what is child maintenance largely, has been extreme and it is obvious that he has put in the past, and will put in the future, every conceivable obstacle in the way to frustrate implementation of the court's order. It is worth him reflecting, however, that when the court makes an order the owner of that order is not the wife, it is the court. When you defy the order you are not defying your former spouse, you are defying the court.

In this case the appointment of the receiver is sought in order to recover arrears of child maintenance pursuant to orders made on 27^th June 2007 and 27^th February 2013, which have been calculated according the schedule in the bundle, which I am satisfied that the husband has received, at £74,617 (rounded up to the nearest pound) to which, since that schedule was prepared, a further month of arrears in the sum of £1,816 has accrued. In addition, Ryder J ordered the husband to pay the costs on 27^th February 2013 and the costs draftsman estimates that the costs which are captured by that order come to £66,209; that will need to be assessed, but the fact that the assessment process has not been completed is not a reason for not awarding the grant of a receiver, it being reasonably apprehended that when the allocator is issued that the respondent will, in like manner, defy his obligations under that also. The third reason is to capture costs orders for which Mr. Swift will shortly be applying, which are the costs that have been expended by the wife since the autumn of 2013 in trying to enforce the orders which I have mentioned. Those costs, including the costs of the attendance of Mr. Swift and Miss Judd today, come to £47,185. I will later entertain an application by Mr. Swift for an order to cover those costs.

I am satisfied on the facts of this case that this is a husband who has been guilty of extreme defiance of orders principally for child maintenance, which cannot be described as anything other than banal and ordinary. His reason for not paying is inexcusable. Indeed, inasmuch as the wife has been paid in the past to some extent that is only due to successful application by the court of its powers under the Attachment of Earnings Act. In these circumstances I have no hesitation in granting the order to appoint a receiver over the husband's assets. Two candidates have been put up and, for reasons which have been explained to me, the preference of the wife is, in fact, for the slightly more experienced, but concomitantly slightly more expensive, CCW Recovery Solutions LLP of Tunbridge Wells, of which the receiver would be Mr. Newman. In those circumstances, having read the affidavit in support of the application, I am satisfied that Mr. Newman would be an appropriate person to exercise the powers of receivership in this case. I therefore grant that application.

The second aspect is to extend the freezing order, which is due to expire at 4 pm today, until the conclusion of the receivership and in aid of the receivership. If I did not make that order I would have thought it almost inevitable that Mr. Newman's first act would be to apply to reinstate the freezing order so that the assets, which he has to gather in in order to satisfy the Judgments in this case, could be preserved. It would be a wholly inappropriate act for the court not to extend the freezing order to cover the period of the receivership so I therefore extend the freezing order for a further 12 months. If Mr. Newman needs more time towards the expiry of that period he will have to apply for it.

In this case the wife's second application was pursuant to Rule 4.8 of the Family Procedure Rules, and Practice Direction 4B, which accompanies it, for an extended civil restraint order to be made against Captain Wilmot.

In Financial Remedies Practice 2013 - 2014, para. 4.6(1) it is said that these rules specify the power of the court to make a civil restraint order. It is a direct counterpart of CPR Rule 3.11 which, since 1^st October 2004, has placed on a statutory footing the inherent jurisdiction of the court to prevent abuse of its process by vexatious litigants by making a Grepe v Loam [1887] 37 Ch 168 order. These powers are by no means unfamiliar and have been with us for generations and, indeed, in the sphere of family law since the advent of the Children Act 1989, s.91(14), they have been made in that field very often.

The power to make an extended civil restraint order may only be made by a High Court Judge. An extended order, which is applied for here, may only be sought where a party has persistently made applications which are totally without merit. If the order is made the party against whom it is made:

Here, on 24^th January 2012, Ryder J dismissed two appeals by the husband as being totally without merit. It is true that the order, unaccountably, does not record that finding but the words of the Judgment are perfectly clear and I believe it is appropriate for me to proceed on the footing that this is in effect an order recording two applications dismissed as totally without merit. I do not read Rule 4.3(7)(a) in a technical and literal way as requiring that the order must record the declaration if the Judgment makes it plain on its face that such a declaration has been made.

On 25^th July 2013 Lloyd LJ dismissed three applications for permission to appeal as each being totally without merit and the order duly recorded that they were totally without merit. The order in para. 5 states:

This is, in my view, an egregious case where Captain Wilmot has behaved vexatiously and I am satisfied, having taken all matters into account, that it is appropriate for me to exercise my discretion to make the order. The nominated Judge for these purposes will be myself unless I am not available, in which case it may be only a serving puisne High Court Judge.

The wife applies for an order for costs, to be assessed on the indemnity basis, in relation to the four applications in which she has been successful, namely her three applications for the appointment of a receiver, extension of the freezing injunction, the making of an extended civil restraint order, and in successfully resisting the application made by the husband, which I have categorised and certified to be totally meritless.

In Three Rivers District Council & Ors. v Governor and Company of the Bank of England [2006] EWHC 816 (Comm) Tomlinson J (as he then was) summarised at para. 25 the relevant principles in determining whether an order for an indemnity costs should be made. Before I turn to those I deal first with the question of basic entitlement. The four applications that have been made in this case do not fall within the exception in Family Procedure Rules 28.3 where the general rule is no order as to costs. In such circumstances the court starts, as has been said in authority, with a blank sheet, although it is a blank sheet where there is a strong steer, following the decision of the Court of Appeal in Gojkovic v Gojkovic, in favour of costs following the event.

I have no hesitation in concluding that the wife has prevailed on each of her applications and, having successfully resisted an unmeritorious application made by the husband, is entitled to an order for costs. The question is on what basis that should be ordered. In the case to which I have referred, Three Rivers District Council in principle (2) Tomlinson J said:

I therefore make an order for costs in the wife's favour to be assessed on the indemnity basis.

The next matter I turn to is whether I should order a quantified payment to be made on an interim basis as I am required to consider by virtue of CPR 44.2(8) which says: