Injunction

Attorney General v Ebert (QBD (Div Ct) [2002] 2 All ER 789)

The respondent had been declared a vexatious litigant under s42 of the Supreme Court Act 1981 but this had not deterred him from making frequent attendances to bankruptcy chambers at the Royal Courts of Justice, from where he had on ten different occasions been removed by security guards. On many occasions he had made requests of court staff to the effect that one or other of the many applications he was making should be dealt with by the judge immediately, and he had written many letters to the judge making serious allegations against him. The court’s supervisory role extended beyond the mere regulation of litigation and of litigants who had submitted themselves to the compulsory jurisdiction of the court, and included the regulation of the manner in which the court process could in general be utilised. The advent of the CPR only served to bolster the principle that, in the exercise of its inherent jurisdiction, the court had the power to restrain litigants from wasting the time of court staff and disturbing the orderly conduct of court processes in a completely obsessive pursuit of their own litigation, taking it forward by one unmeritorious application after another and insisting that they should be afforded priority over other litigants. A distinction had to be made between the respondent’s practice of making innumerable applications (which could be kept under control by other techniques) and matters that amounted to disturbances of the process of the court. The existing orders had not prevented the respondent from wasting the time of court staff and disrupting the conduct of court business. There was a substantial risk that the process of the court would continue to be seriously abused, and that the proper administration of justice in the future would be seriously impeded by the respondent unless the court intervened now with appropriate injunctive relief. The court granted an injunction barring the respondent from entering the Royal Courts of Justice without express permission, except for the purposes of attending a hearing which he had been granted permission, limited to three years in the first instance.