Infuriating the judiciary

Tasyurdu v Secretary of State for the Home Department (CA TLR 16 April)

Solicitors and counsel have a duty to inform the court as soon as it known that a matter listed for hearing would not proceed and, indeed, when it was known that a fixture might not proceed. Even if a case settled very late in the day, steps should be taken via the Royal Courts of Justice switchboard to notify in advance the clerks of the judges concerned. There was nothing more infuriating than spending the weekend preparing Monday’s case only to be told that it had settled late on Friday. Under modern procedure, before any hearing took place in the Court of Appeal, the judge or judges involved would have given detailed consideration to the papers. In particular, time spent preparing for an application for permission to appeal would almost always be much longer than the time allotted for the hearing. In the present appeal, apart from half an hour having been set for the hearing, Lord Justice Sedley had spent two hours reading and considering the papers during the course of the weekend. The matter had been listed in order to investigate how it came about that it was withdrawn so late and to investigate whether that would have any impact on the costs recoverable for those acting under a Legal Services Commission Public Funding Certificate. The Court in fact accepted that the failure to inform the Court until the morning of the hearing was a one-off oversight of a very competent and conscientious solicitor.