Anwar v Verhoeven

This is a renewed application for leave to appeal the order of His Honour Judge Roberts sitting at the County Court at Central London on 23 January 2025.

By that order, the judge directed that Ms Anwar’s application should be heard at 3.30pm on 18 February 2025 and should be heard together with the respondent’s application for relief from sanctions. The judge directed that the respondents must file a paginated and indexed bundle for the purpose of that hearing by 4pm on 11 February. He also ordered the parties to exchange and file skeleton arguments not less than 48 hours prior to the hearing.

By her applicant’s notice dated 12 February 2025, Ms Anwar, the applicant, indicated that the date of the decision she was seeking to appeal was 23 January 2025 and that she wished to appeal the whole of that order. She also applied for stay of execution to suspend the hearing of her appeal on 2 April 2024 until the outcome of this present appeal. She explained that she suffered from cervical spinal spondylosis and a number of other serious medical conditions and she set out some adjustments which she suggested the Court should make in consequence.

The Applicant provided a document entitled “grounds of appeal” which set out the arguments she wished to advance. She has developed those arguments orally before me today.

As to the first paragraph of Judge Roberts’s order which fixed the date for the hearing of the appellant’s application and the respondent’s application for relief from sanctions, Ms Anwar argued that the judge had in effect permitted the respondent to file an application for relief which was filed 10 weeks and three days late. She argued that in holding a one-hour hearing at 3.30 on 18 February, the judge had erred in law by ignoring her medical condition.

As to the second paragraph of the order, which gave directions for the filing of a bundle for the appeal by 4pm on 11 February, the Applicant argued that the judge had erred in law by “covertly permitting (without reason) the respondent to vary the order of the trial judge by submitting a bundle now with all the requisite documents which should have been filed by 6 August 2024”. She said that the judge erred by permitting the respondents to appeal when they did not have permission to appeal and without an application for relief from sanctions and without a skeleton argument. She said that the respondent’s notice is invalid as a result.

Finally, she submitted in response to paragraph three of the judge’s order that the judge erred by making the order set out in paragraphs one and two which “outrightly favour the respondents whose respondent’s notice dated 18 October 2024, and the application notice dated 16 January 2025 are invalid”. She said those orders were “against all ethics of justice and the rule of law as well as against my human rights under Article 6 and Article 8”. She said the judge ignored her “set aside application dated 20 January 2025” and instead issued his order dated 24 January 2025 to permit the respondents to appeal several months out of time. She said that by directing what was to be included in the bundles for the February hearing the judge was prejudging the outcome of that hearing.

This application was considered on the papers by Sir Stephen Stewart on 11 March 2025. Sir Stephen refused permission to appeal and refused to order a stay, but he indicated the appellant had seven days to renew that application. This is my judgment on that renewed application.

In essence, I share Sir Stephen’s view that there is no merit in any of these grounds. As he pointed out, it is important to recognise that the only appellant’s notice filed is directed against the order of 23 January 2025, and there has been no appeal filed against the order of 18 February 2025. I was told this morning that another appellant’s notice has been served but that is not before me today.

As to ground one, and the challenge to paragraph one of the order of 23 January, the order permitting the respondent, Ms Verhoeven, to make application for relief from sanctions was made on 7 January 2025 and that decision has not been appealed. That is in itself a complete answer to this point.

In any event, in my judgment, there can be no legitimate complaint about the decision to allow the respondent to apply for relief from sanction. The merits of that application would be decided at a subsequent hearing.

As to ground two, the complaint is directed to the hearing of 18 February 2025 and at present there is no application before me in respect of the findings on that date. To the extent that the complaint is to be read as contending that on the 23 January the judge decided that a hearing should go ahead on 18 February, the applicant says that the decision to make that order disregarded her medical condition and her preference for a hearing date in April when the weather was likely to be milder.

In my judgment, however, the judge was perfectly entitled to fix a date for the hearing as he did. It is simply not possible for the Court to accommodate every litigant’s preference for a hearing date. The Court is obliged to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate the reasonable requests of those with disabilities, such as Ms Anwar. However, that was not excluded by the fixing of the date of 18 February. It was open to her to request and the Court to accommodate her attending that hearing remotely. Ms Anwar says that she gets vertigo if she spends too long working on a screen, but that too could be accommodated by the court giving her appropriate breaks.

In my judgment it is simply impossible to say that the judge acted improperly in fixing a date for the hearing of those applications given the Court’s willingness and ability to make reasonable adjustments.

As to ground three, in the relevant paragraph the judge was simply setting out what was required to be included in the bundle to be used at the hearing of the two applications. It is nonsense to suggest that by so doing the judge was prejudging the outcome of the appeals.

It follows that for essentially the same reasons as were set out by Sir Stephen Stewart, I reject all three proposed grounds of appeal and dismiss this application. That being so, there can be no question of a stay since the stay was only intended to operate pending the outcome of this appeal.

That then completes my judgment and completes this hearing.