Gable Insurance AG v William Dewsall & Ors [2025] EWCA Civ 884

[2025] EWCA Civ 884Case No CA 2025 000636
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
BUSINESS AND PROPERTY COURTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES
BUSINESS LIST (CHD)
CAROLINE SHEA KC
(SITTING AS A DEPUTY HIGH COURT JUDGE)
BL 2022 001936
Venue Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, WC2A 2LLDate 11 July 2025
Before
LORD JUSTICE LEWISONLADY JUSTICE ASPLINSIR LAUNCELOT HENDERSON
Between
GABLE INSURANCE AGClaimant and Respondent(1) WILLIAM DEWSALLThird Defendant and Appellant(2) MICHAEL HIRSCHFIELDAppellant(3) JUDITH DEWSALLAppellant(4) HORATIO RISK CONSULTING LLPAppellant
Daniel Feetham KC and Rowan Pennington-Benton (instructed by Madison Legal Limited) for AppellantStephen Auld KC, Imran Benson and Jade Fowler (instructed by Rosling King LLP) for RespondentHearing Hearing date: 9 June 2025
Approved JudgmentThis judgment was handed down remotely at 10.30am on 11 July 2025 by circulation to the parties or their representatives by e-mail and by release to the National Archives..............................

Sir Launcelot Henderson:

[1]In this expedited appeal the third defendant, Mrs Judith Dewsall (“Mrs Dewsall”), challenges various orders and directions made by Caroline Shea KC, sitting as a Deputy Judge of the High Court in the Business List of the Business and Property Courts (“the Judge”). These orders and direction were made after a hearing on the first fully effective return date of a worldwide freezing order (“WFO”) originally made in private and without notice by His Honour Judge Davis-White KC, sitting as a High Court Judge, on 26 November 2024, on the application of the claimant, which is a Liechtenstein-incorporated insurance company in liquidation called Gable Insurance AG (“GIAG”). The three main respondents to the WFO were Mr William Dewsall (“Mr Dewsall”), his wife Mrs Dewsall and a limited liability partnership (Horatio Risk Consulting LLP) (“HRC”), of which Mr and Mrs Dewsall are the only members.[2]Although GIAG was incorporated in Liechtenstein, it was managed and carried on its main business in London. At all material times before the business collapsed in 2017, its chief executive officer (“CEO”) was Mr Dewsall. The collapse was precipitated by regulatory concerns in Liechtenstein about the solvency of the business. In the present English proceedings, which were begun by the liquidators in November 2022, GIAG claims that Mr Dewsall (who is the first defendant) misappropriated approximately £19 million from GIAG between 2010 and 2017, and that he used the misappropriated money to fund a lavish lifestyle for himself and his family, including his then partner and now wife Mrs Dewsall. The second defendant, Michael Hirschfield (“Mr Hirschfield”), is the former Finance Director of GIAG. The gist of the claim against him is that he knowingly permitted and assisted in the misappropriations, and is liable for them on that basis.[3]The matrimonial home of Mr and Mrs Dewsall was, until recently, a substantial country property called Weald Hall in Essex. Mr Dewsall was the sole registered proprietor, but it appears that he purported to transfer the whole beneficial interest in the property to Mrs Dewsall by a Deed of Trust dated 26 October 2012. The validity of this transfer has never been accepted by GIAG, but it is fair to say that no steps have ever been taken by GIAG to set it aside. When GIAG first learned of its existence in 2023, the property was on the market for sale with an asking price of £7 million. Following a long and tangled history, which it is unnecessary to recount but which appears to reflect little credit on Mr and Mrs Dewsall, it was eventually sold for approximately £4.2 million and under a court order the net proceeds of sale, amounting to some £850,000, were paid into court.[4]At an early stage of the English proceedings, prompted in part by the marketing of Weald Hall and partly by the sale of some valuable cars the proceeds of which were deposited into Mrs Dewsall’s bank account in June 2023, GIAG made an application without notice for a WFO against Mr Dewsall which was granted on 25 July 2023 by Jonathan Hilliard KC sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge. By his order sealed on 26 July 2023, which it is convenient to refer to as “WFO1”, the Deputy Judge made a WFO in substantially standard form restraining Mr Dewsall from removing from England and Wales any of his assets which were in the jurisdiction up to a value of some £18.7 million, or in any way disposing of, dealing with or diminishing the value of any of his assets whether they were in or outside England and Wales up to the same value. Specific provision was made in relation to Weald Hall or its proceeds of sale, and three motor vehicles listed in a schedule. The order was limited in duration until a return date on 18 August 2023 or further order of the court.[5]The next stage in the proceedings was a consent order (“the Consent Order”) made by Michael Green J on 17 August 2023, which compromised an application by GIAG to continue WFO1, and an application by both Mr and Mrs Dewsall, who were represented at the hearing by solicitors and counsel, to discharge WFO 1. In short, it was agreed that the injunction granted by WFO 1 should be revoked and replaced with undertakings given to the court by Mr and Mrs Dewsall. The undertakings given by Mr Dewsall broadly corresponded to the substantive relief against him contained in WFO 1, with the addition of specific provision permitting the Dewsalls to market and sell Weald Hall at arm’s length and to use the proceeds to buy a new home anywhere in the world, on terms that the existing undertaking would then be transferred to any substitute property, and any surplus proceeds of sale of Weald Hall would also continue to be so bound.[6]The undertaking given by Mrs Dewsall (referred to in the Consent Order as “Ms Dewsall”) is important, and I need to record its exact terms:
“Ms Dewsall’s undertaking 5. Subject to what is said at paragraph 6 below, Ms Dewsall undertakes that she will not remove from England and Wales or in any other way dispose of, deal with, or diminish the value of the Proceeds of Sale and/or the New Property (and any balance from the Proceeds of Sale). 6. Nothing in the undertaking given at paragraph 5 above will prevent Ms Dewsall from dealing with the Proceeds of Sale in a manner consistent with the exceptions permitted by paragraphs 12-15 of the WFO, had she been a respondent to the WFO.”
[7]The exceptions in paragraphs 12 to 15 of WFO 1 were of a standard nature, and included provision for expenditure on ordinary living expenses and on obtaining legal advice and representation in the following terms:
“12. This order does not prohibit the Respondent from spending £5,000 a week (or any equivalent sum in a foreign currency) towards his ordinary living expenses and also a reasonable sum on legal advice and representation. The permitted sums for legal expenses include those in relation to any defence to the claim. But before spending any money the Respondent must tell the Applicant’s legal representatives where the money is to come from.”
[8]When she gave her undertaking, Mrs Dewsall had not yet been joined as a party to the proceedings; but this was on the agenda at the case management conference (“CMC”) held before Master Pester on 22 February 2024, when an application by GIAG to amend the particulars of claim and to join Mrs Dewsall and HRC as the third and fourth defendants was adjourned to a date to be fixed, and in due course the order sought was made by Deputy Master Rhys on 22 March 2024.[9]The claim pleaded against Mrs Dewsall is contained in paragraphs 80 to 86 of the amended particulars of claim. The claim has two limbs. The first limb alleges that although Mrs Dewsall was not at any time a director or officer of GIAG, she received two separate groups of payments from GIAG, arranged by Mr Dewsall and/or Mr Hirschfield, over dates ranging from 4 January 2010 to 17 August 2018 via a UK company owned and controlled by Mr Dewsall called Hogarth Underwriting Agencies Ltd (“HUAL”). These alleged payments totalled some £110,000. It is alleged that Mrs Dewsall provided no services to GIAG or HUAL in return for these payments, which were improper. But it is noteworthy that no specific cause of action is pleaded for recovery of these sums from Mrs Dewsall in her personal capacity.[10]The second, and more significant, limb relates to Weald Hall. I need not describe it in detail, because it is common ground that it pleads a good arguable case to trace excessive payments allegedly misappropriated from GIAG by Mr Dewsall into(a) 19% of the value of Weald Hall, representing by subrogation a sum of £600,000 paid to the mortgagee of the property in reduction of an original mortgage loan of about £1.7 million, and(b) numerous other payments relating to the improvement and maintenance of the property which total about £1.026 million. Paragraph 85 then explains that since Mr and Mrs Dewsall claim she is the sole beneficial owner of Weald Hall, she is “joined as a potentially interested party”.[11]In due course, a defence settled by counsel was served by Mrs Dewsall which broadly pleaded that she had never been involved in the management of GIAG’s business or in her husband’s financial affairs; that Weald Hall had been purchased by Mr Dewsall in his sole name to enable the mortgage loan to be obtained; but that he always intended the property to be owned beneficially by her, and the 2012 deed of gift was executed in consideration of natural love and affection and in contemplation of their marriage (which did not, however, take place until 5 July 2017). It was contended in the alternative that Mr and Mrs Dewsall were joint beneficial owners of the property after their marriage. Mrs Dewsall also admitted that she had received payments from GIAG, but her case was that they were legitimate payments due to her husband as remuneration in his capacity as CEO of, and as a shareholder in, GIAG. To the extent that any payments may have been unlawful, GIAG was put to proof that they could be traced into Weald Hall.[12]At the CMC, directions for trial were given in a trial window after 31 March 2025 with a 10-day time estimate. Master Pester also gave the parties (who did not yet include Mrs Dewsall) permission to adduce expert evidence in the fields of(i) Liechtenstein law and(ii) forensic accountancy, limited to six experts in all, with one expert per field for each of the claimant, Mr Dewsall and Mr Hirschfield. The issues to be addressed by the experts were then identified in the CMC order, together with a timetable and associated directions of a usual nature. Directions were also given for a pre-trial review (“PTR”) to be held about 4 weeks before the start of the trial window.[13]At that point, one might have hoped that matters would proceed in an orderly fashion towards trial without the need for extensive further interlocutory orders. Unfortunately, however, extensive failures by the Dewsalls and HRC to comply with their disclosure obligations led to a further round of court applications and orders, starting with a search order made at a hearing without notice on 29 July 2024 by Ms Saira Salimi sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge (“the Search Order”). The Search Order was made on the application of GIAG and supported by detailed evidence contained in the second affidavit of Martin Meredith, a partner of GIAG’s English solicitors, Rosling King LLP. The Search Order contained very detailed provisions for a comprehensive search and imaging operation to be conducted at Weald Hall, under the supervision of the designated supervising solicitors, who were a large team from Pinsent Masons LLP headed by Mr Julian Diaz-Rainey as lead partner.[14]Regrettably, however, the Dewsalls seem to have done all they could to delay and impede the search operation, which led to the issue of a bench warrant and, even after access was finally permitted, to a series of obstructive tactics and attempts to conceal or destroy evidence. The extent of the disruption caused by the Dewsalls may be gauged from the enormous costs incurred by the supervising solicitors, which we were told had exceeded £2 million by February 2025, and from the detailed evidence contained in Mr Meredith’s sixth affidavit sworn on 22 November 2024 in support of GIAG’s application for a further WFO, namely that made by Judge Davis-White KC on 26 November 2024 (“WFO 2”: see [1] above). The respondents to WFO 2 were Mr Dewsall, Mrs Dewsall, HRC and four other non-party respondents who included the Dewsalls’ daughter, Ms Hayley Dewsall. The application, according to Mr Meredith’s evidence, was prompted by the discovery that quantities of hitherto unknown jewellery and other valuable chattels were stored at Weald Hall, together with detailed evidence of the scale of the activities carried on by the Dewsalls and their staff at the property and its 26 hectares of grounds, including equestrian facilities, and (last but not least) evidence derived from investigators that Mr Dewsall apparently had many overseas bank accounts in different jurisdictions.[15]WFO 2 recorded in paragraph 2 that nothing in it replaced or released the Dewsalls from their obligations and undertakings pursuant to WFO1, or from the undertakings given in the Consent Order. Paragraph 6 then restrained Mr Dewsall, Mrs Dewsall and HRC from removing from England and Wales any of their assets within the jurisdiction up to the value of £60 million, or from disposing or dealing with any of their assets whether they were in or outside England and Wales up to the same value. In other words, the basic freezing injunction was in the same standard form as WFO 1, starting with a prohibition on the removal of assets from the jurisdiction of the English court and then extending the scope of the order to embrace any disposal etc of assets worldwide up to the same value.[16]It is convenient to note here that this standard form of order reflects well-established principles which go back at least as far as the judgments of the Court of Appeal in Derby & Co Ltd v Weldon (No 1) [1990] Ch 48, where it was held that the court would only make a WFO in an exceptional case: see, in particular, the judgment of Nicholls LJ, with which Parker and May LJJ agreed, at 62A-C. After observing that “each case must depend on its own facts”, Nicholls LJ continued:
“An order restraining a defendant from dealing with any of his assets overseas, and requiring him to disclose details of all his assets wherever located, is a draconian order. The risk of prejudice to which, in the absence of such an order, the plaintiff will be subject is that of the dissipation or secretion of assets abroad. The risk must, on the facts, be appropriately grave before it will be just and convenient for such a draconian order to be made. It goes without saying that before such an order is made the court will scrutinise the facts with particular care …I do not think it is correct that, if an order is made in the present case regarding overseas assets, such an order will become, or should become, the norm in cases where a restraint order is made regarding assets within the jurisdiction.”
[17]With regard to Weald Hall, paragraph 7(a) of WFO 2 confirmed that the net sale proceeds of the property were included in the prohibition, and that they should be paid into court as ordered by Peter Knox KC on 29 July 2024.[18]The exceptions to the order included, in paragraph 18, a saving for expenditure on ordinary living expenses “and also a reasonable sum on legal advice and representation.” The permitted sums for legal expenses expressly included “those in relation to any defence to the claim”, subject to the usual requirement that GIAG’s legal representatives must be informed where the money is to come from.[19]The first return date for the hearing was fixed for 14 January 2015, with liberty for GIAG to apply to move the date “pending overseas enforcement”, but subject to a proviso that the order should in any event be served on the respondents by no later than 20 December 2024.[20]On 14 January 2025 the matter came before Mr Lance Ashworth KC sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, when he continued WFO 2 until a further return date in February with a one day time estimate, but in the reduced sum of £36 million. He also directed each of the Dewsalls to produce an affidavit giving details of all his or her assets in England and Wales and worldwide exceeding £5,000 in value. This was to be done by 24 January 2025, and all relevant supporting documentation was to be disclosed.[21]Mr Ashworth KC delivered a helpful extempore judgment explaining his reasons for continuing the WFO, but in a reduced sum. He pointed out that there was no claim currently pleaded which went beyond approximately £18 million against Mr Dewsall, and £1.2 million against Mrs Dewsall. The figure of £60 million in WFO 2 had been based on a summary of the investigators’ report referred to in Mr Meredith’s sixth affidavit, but the report itself had apparently not been placed before Judge Davis-White. That deficiency was remedied in Mr Meredith’s 18th witness statement prepared for the return date hearing, so Mr Ashworth KC was able to inspect a redacted version of the report. He recorded that it ran to some 14 pages, and identified, country by country, bank accounts said to be connected to Mr Dewsall, giving precise figures for the balances. This evidence suggested that Mr Dewsall had links with about 99 bank accounts, in the total sum of about £60 million.[22]On that basis, Mr Ashworth KC said he was not surprised that WFO 2 had been made in the sum of £60 million, on the strength of the evidence then available to the court. But the problem was that, whenever banks identified in the investigators’ report had been served outside the jurisdiction, all the responses so far received had been negative. The banks all denied that they had any accounts in Mr Dewsall’s name. Many banks, however, had not yet responded, and GIAG submitted that it was inconceivable the investigation report had “got it so wrong that there is not something there”. It was also suggested that, even if the accounts were not held in Mr Dewsall’s name, it was very likely that they were held by some third party for his benefit. Mr Ashworth KC was understandably concerned whether it could still properly be said that there was evidence that “the person sought to be enjoined has assets outside the jurisdiction”, that being one of the key requirements for the making of a WFO. On balance, however, he was satisfied that the appropriate course was to continue the WFO for a short further period until the necessary one-day hearing could be fixed in a window of 10 and 11 February 2025.[23]Accordingly, he said in paragraph 28 of his judgment:
“I am going to continue the injunction until that date. On that date, I expect the claimants to report to the Court what has happened by way of investigation between now and then, and the judge on that occasion will be able to have a fuller understanding of the likely recovery. If nothing else has been discovered and there have been more what I would call nil returns, I would anticipate that it is unlikely that the injunction will be maintained at the level at which it is currently …”
I should add that the reduced figure of £36 million in which Mr Ashworth KC continued WFO 2 represented the £18 million frozen by WFO 1, together with an estimate for accrued interest from the dates of the alleged misappropriations and costs: see paragraph 25 of the judgment.[24]So far as concerns Mrs Dewsall, she was represented at the hearing by Mr Edward Miller, a partner of Madison Legal, who had very recently received formal instructions to act on her behalf. The hearings before the Judge in February 2025[25]The further return date directed by Mr Ashworth KC was initially listed before Joanna Smith J, but the hearing had to be further adjourned due to lack of time with the consequence that the matter came before the Judge (Caroline Shea KC) on Friday 21 February 2025 for its first fully effective hearing. At this hearing, both GIAG and Mrs Dewsall were represented by leading and junior counsel: Stephen Auld KC leading Imran Benson for GIAG, and Daniel Feetham KC leading Rowan Pennington-Benton for Mrs Dewsall. The hearing ran over into the following Monday, and the Judge then delivered an unreserved oral judgment on the morning of Tuesday 25 March (“J1”). We have an approved transcript of J1, which unfortunately lacks a neutral citation reference.[26]After setting out the background, much of which I have summarised above, the Judge recorded at paragraph 19 of J1 that she had a number of applications to deal with. The application which had taken up most of the time at the two-day hearing was GIAG’s adjourned application to continue WFO 2. As she said at paragraph 20, it was common ground that the task of the court was to assess afresh, ab initio, whether that order should be granted. She then reviewed the evidence in some detail, and referred at paragraph 30 to the concern which Mr Ashworth KC had articulated in his judgment: see [22] above. She recorded that it was still the position that no positive returns had been made following service of the relevant foreign jurisdiction orders, and the highest GIAG could put the case was to hold out a reasonable prospect that some of the banks which had not yet responded were likely to hold assets in Mr Dewsall’s name (paragraph 31). Mr Dewsall himself, who appeared in person at the hearing, assured the Judge that he had “no more money or assets anywhere” and “there is nothing further to declare” (paragraph 33).[27]The Judge then directed herself on the law, with particular reference to the “Summary of current practice” given by Lord Leggatt JSC in Convoy Collateral Ltd v Broad Idea International Ltd [2021] UKPC 24, [2023] AC 389, at [101] which includes the requirements that(i) “the applicant … has a good arguable case for being granted a judgment or order for the payment of a sum of money that … will be enforceable through the process of the court” and(ii) “the respondent holds assets … against which such a judgment could be enforced”. The problem facing GIAG, said the Judge said at paragraph 38, was in meeting the second of those requirements. She then made some severe criticisms of the investigative report at paragraph 39: the material it referred to was “second hand at best”, and the report itself was redacted and silent as to its authorship. Although the evidence had been just strong enough to justify the initial grant of WFO 2, since then the strength of that evidence had “by stages declined” (paragraph 40). The Judge’s ultimate conclusion, in paragraph 45, was that she was constrained to discharge WFO 2 in relation to Mr Dewsall because requirement (ii) had not been met. She said she reached that decision “with considerable hesitation, in light of the suspicions inevitably raised by Mr Dewsall’s behaviour”, and she made it clear that, but for the lack of firm evidence on requirement (ii), she would have exercised her discretion to continue the order.[28]It is important to note that there has been no appeal against the Judge’s decision to discharge WFO 2 in relation to Mr Dewsall. It also seems to have been the Judge’s initial understanding that GIAG accepted that, if the order against Mr Dewsall was not continued, then the same must be true of the related orders against Mrs Dewsall and their daughter Ms Hayley Dewsall: see paragraph 46.[29]In the remainder of J1, the Judge dealt with the other applications before her, to some aspects of which I will need to return.[30]Following the oral delivery of J1, counsel for GIAG pointed out to the Judge that there remained extensive assets of the Dewsalls which had been discovered on the search of Weald Hall, and submitted to her that, on the basis of her findings, these domestic assets should clearly remain frozen. This was opposed by Mrs Dewsall, so the Judge gave the parties an opportunity to address the question overnight by way of brief written notes. The note submitted by counsel for Mrs Dewsall argued that the dismissal of WFO 2 against Mr Dewsall was the end of the matter, and the only relevant orders or undertakings remaining in place were WFO 1 as continued or varied by the undertakings in the Consent Order. GIAG’s note, however, pointed out that the applications for both WFO 1 and WFO 2 had always concerned domestic English assets and accounts as well as overseas assets and accounts, and argued that the conditions for the grant of freezing relief in respect of the domestic assets were still clearly satisfied. Further, the undertakings given by Mrs Dewsall, at a time before she was joined as a party, were in effect confined to the equity in Weald Hall, and WFO 1 did not extend to any of her other assets or to any assets of HRC. In a lengthy footnote, GIAG summarised the evidence which established the existence of assets within the jurisdiction which were not disclosed when WFO 1 was made. Counsel also submitted that, even if the Judge had initially taken a different view when delivering J1, it was open to her to change her mind in accordance with the overriding objective before the order was drawn up, citing well-known authority to that effect.[31]In a second extempore judgment (“J2”) which she delivered on 26 February 2025, and of which we again have an approved transcript (although it is misleadingly described on the front sheet as the third judgment), the Judge accepted GIAG’s submissions. As she said, in paragraph 1 of J2:
“The without notice application for WFO 2 was on its face for the imposition of a worldwide freezing order, and the application on the return date is for the continuation of WFO 2 in its entirety. I have by yesterday’s judgment rejected the case for the freezing order being applied out of the jurisdiction. The claimant says it is implicit in the application and explicit on the evidence that the claimant has contemplated and addressed the question of the freezing order being continued insofar as it relates to national assets. I agree with that submission. In my judgment, it is implicit in the very nature of an application for a worldwide freezing order that the test must be satisfied as to the existence of assets both internationally and domestically and that failure to establish one does not entail as a matter of necessity a failure overall. That seems to me incontrovertible logic. Accordingly, I consider that even in the absence of a specifically pleaded application in the alternative, I have both jurisdiction and discretion to continue WFO 2, wholly or in part, in relation to all or only some of the assets, and as against some or all of the defendants.”
[32]The Judge then set out her reasons for concluding that the conditions for the grant of domestic freezing relief were made out in relation to Mr Dewsall, Mrs Dewsall and HRC, and that it would be just and convenient for WFO 2 to be continued in relation to the UK assets. She rejected a submission for Mrs Dewsall that the only basis for a domestic freezing order against her could be the so-called Chabra jurisdiction (see T.S.B. Private Bank International S.A. v Chabra [1992] 1 WLR 231) and said she understood an important part of GIAG’s case to be the evidence that Mr and Mrs Dewsall mingled their assets, leaving the legal or beneficial ownership unclear. The Judge said, in paragraph 7 of J2:
“It is in my judgment clearly unfair to the claimant for Mr and Mrs Dewsall to leave unanswered the question as to the legal and beneficial ownership of many of the assets that have been discovered only through the search order, and then for Mrs Dewsall to seek to take advantage of that gap in the evidence to support a submission that it is not appropriate for a freezing order to be made in respect of assets which had the appearance of being owned by Mrs Dewsall alone.”
[33]In a further short extempore judgment also delivered on 26 February 2025 (“J3”), the Judge considered the question of the cap on the amount to be frozen in this jurisdiction in respect of Mrs Dewsall. She concluded that a figure in the region of £15 million would be appropriate, while acknowledging (in paragraph 4) that this was “very rough and ready, a very blunt way of approaching the exercise”.[34]The Judge’s rulings on the continuation of WFO 2 were reflected in the freezing order which she made on 6 March 2025 and was sealed on the following day (“the Freezing Order”). The basic order against Mrs Dewsall froze her assets within England and Wales up to the value of £15 million until judgment on the claim or further order. Paragraph 4 contained a similar order against Mr Dewsall, with an upper limit of £36 million. The injunction expressly included the net sale proceeds of Weald Hall, investments and other financial assets held in or through the corporate bodies listed in schedule C, and the jewellery and other chattels set out at length with estimated valuations in schedule E. The exceptions to the order permitted Mrs Dewsall to spend “a reasonable sum on legal advice and representation subject to a cap of £400,000 + VAT” (paragraph 17). As before, the permitted sums included expenditure on the defence of the claim, and there was an obligation to inform GIAG’s lawyers where the money was to come from. Further provisions in schedule G set out a detailed mechanism for the raising of funds and payment of fees, including a protocol for arranging sales of jewellery on reasonable terms acceptable to GIAG.

Mrs Dewsall’s grounds of appeal

[35]Mrs Dewsall now appeals to this court on five grounds, with permission granted by Asplin LJ. Ground 1 challenges the Freezing Order, alleging that there was no proper basis for it in law or fact, nor in the amount ordered, and that it was procedurally irregular to allow GIAG to advance a new case. Ground 2 challenges a ruling by the Judge that Mrs Dewsall was not entitled to rely on forensic accountancy evidence at the forthcoming trial of the action, alleging that the ruling was wrong in law, procedurally irregular, unfair or irrational, and in breach of her right to a fair trial. Ground 3 is that the Judge erred in ruling that Mrs Dewsall was not entitled to pay legal and personal expenses from the proceeds of sale of Weald Hall. Ground 4 is that the conditions attached by the Judge to the sale of Mrs Dewsall’s jewellery are irrational or otherwise unlawful, procedurally irregular, and in breach of her right to a fair trial. Ground 5 challenges the Judge’s decision to order Mrs Dewsall to pay the costs of her application dated 3 February 2025 seeking directions in relation to the documents to be disclosed pursuant to the Search Order.

Ground 1: the making of the (domestic) freezing order against Mrs Dewsall

[36]I propose to deal with this ground briefly, because it seems to me all but self-evident that the Judge was fully entitled to make domestic freezing orders against the Dewsalls once she had decided that the overseas scope of WFO 2 was unsustainable for lack of any firm evidence that Mr Dewsall owned assets out of the jurisdiction. The Judge directed herself appropriately on the law, which was largely if not entirely common ground, and she rightly appreciated that it is an integral and essential part of any application for a WFO that the court should first consider whether the respondent has assets within the jurisdiction of sufficient value to make the more draconian remedy of an order freezing overseas assets unnecessary. This important principle has been established at least since the decision of this court in Derby & Co Ltd v Weldon (No 1) in 1990. Apart from the passage from the judgment of Nicholls LJ which I have quoted at [16] above, see too the judgment of Parker LJ at 56H and 57E, aptly cited by counsel for GIAG in their overnight written submissions to the Judge on 26 February 2025, paragraph 2.[37]The evidence that Mrs Dewsall had significant, and previously undisclosed, assets within the jurisdiction, including in particular the valuable jewellery contained in a safe at Weald Hall which first came to light when the Search Order was executed, was overwhelming. Further, the deplorable conduct of the Dewsalls in impeding the search of Weald Hall, and in using UK bank accounts in the names of Mrs Dewsall and/or HRC to dissipate assets to the value of well over £500,000 (see paragraph 7 of GIAG’s written submissions of 26 February 2025), provided ample evidence of the risk of dissipation unless restrained by court order. There is also, in my view, an unattractive element of opportunism in Mrs Dewsall’s current stance that the Freezing Order should be discharged against her, bearing in mind(a) that her applications to the Judge at the February 2025 hearing did not ask for WFO 2 to be discharged (as opposed to modified) in relation to her, and(b) the acceptance on her behalf at the hearing that, if the court had continued WFO 2, her domestic assets would have continued to be caught by it (see J2, paragraph 7) – and all of this in a context where the trial of the action was anyway scheduled to take place in the near future, in July 2025.[38]As to the quantum of the sum frozen (£15 million), this was quintessentially a matter for the Judge’s discretion, and I find it impossible to detect any error of law or principle in her approach. The figure may have been rough and ready, but the Judge had to do the best she could with the voluminous evidence at her disposal, and the Dewsalls had only themselves to blame if the picture was still confused as to who owned what.[39]Similar considerations provide the answer, in my judgment, to the argument forcefully advanced by Mr Feetham KC that injunctive relief could only properly be obtained against Mrs Dewsall on the Chabra basis, that is to say as a person against whom the applicant has no right to claim substantive relief. As Lord Leggatt explained in the Convoy case at [15], the basis for granting such an injunction “is that the person injuncted holds or controls assets against which a judgment against the primary defendant could potentially be enforced”. See too the helpful discussion of the Chabra jurisdiction by Popplewell J in Banco Turko Romana v Cortuk [2018] EWHC 662 (Comm) at [17] to [19]. In the present case, however, I do not think it is right to characterise Mrs Dewsall as a “non-cause of action defendant”, because there is a pleaded claim against her to trace substantial sums into the proceeds of sale of Weald Hall which she maintains was in her sole beneficial ownership. It is true that tracing is not in itself a cause of action or a remedy, but is rather a process which enables misappropriated property or its proceeds to be identified in the hands of a third party; but (subject of course to the forthcoming trial) everything seems to suggest that, even if Mrs Dewsall did have some form of beneficial interest in the property, her interest as a volunteer could not prevail over the proprietary claim advanced by GIAG to recover the traceable proceeds of Mr Dewsall’s alleged misappropriations.[40]The events of the last few years have also shown that the ownership of the other assets situated within the jurisdiction is in many respects unclear, and the Dewsalls have every incentive to ensure that the position should remain unclear for as long as possible. In those circumstances, although the pleaded case against Mrs Dewsall would undoubtedly benefit from some refinement, I think it was legitimately open to GIAG to invite the court to take a broader view and to rely on the copious evidence which suggests that the Dewsalls have been pursuing a deliberate policy of mingling their assets so as to cause maximum confusion. The jurisdiction to grant injunctions derives ultimately from the broad language of section 37(1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981, and it is exercisable “in all cases in which it appears to the court to be just and equitable to do so”. The Judge clearly had this well in mind, and her conclusion that a domestic freezing order should be made against Mrs Dewsall is in my judgment unassailable.

Ground 2: should Mrs Dewsall be able to rely at trial on forensic accountancy evidence?

[41]This ground has been overtaken by events, in the light of orders made at the PTR which took place before Robin Vos, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, on 12 June 2025, three days after the hearing of the appeal.[42]The difficulty confronting Mrs Dewsall was that the original order for expert evidence on forensic accountancy made by Master Pester at the CMC on 19 February 2024 explicitly limited the permission to adduce such evidence to one expert each for GIAG, Mr Dewsall and Mr Hirschfield. No such permission was ever expressly granted to Mrs Dewsall, who had not yet been joined as a party (although she was represented by solicitors and counsel at the CMC). Given the unambiguous terms of paragraph 14 of Master Pester’s order at the CMC, it seemed to us that any argument that Mrs Dewsall had some form of implied permission to call an expert of her own in this discipline was untenable (although the Judge appears to have taken the view, in paragraph 69 of J1, that Mrs Dewsall did have such permission). On the other hand, a note for the court prepared by counsel for GIAG on the morning of the hearing of the appeal indicated that GIAG had no objection in principle to Mrs Dewsall having the benefit of expert accountancy evidence, provided that this would not jeopardise the pre-trial timetable. Indeed, following an extension by the court of the expert evidence timetable, GIAG’s solicitors wrote to Madison Legal on 30 May 2025 suggesting that Mrs Dewsall could instruct the same expert as her husband, who could then deal separately with her position. This suggestion was rejected by Madison Legal on 4 June, after which GIAG made the further suggestion that, if Mrs Dewsall wished to instruct a separate accounting expert, she could have until the morning of the PTR on 12 June to do so.[43]At the conclusion of the hearing before us on 9 June, we informed the parties that in our view Mrs Dewsall did not have any existing permission to adduce expert evidence, and if she wished to apply for such permission, she should do so at the forthcoming PTR. This she evidently did by an application dated 11 June, and she was then granted permission by paragraph 6 of the order made by the Deputy Judge to rely on an expert report from Mr Philip Allister on the question whether funds alleged to be misappropriated from GIAG are traceable through HUAL and GSLL to Weald Hall, as alleged in the Re-Amended Particulars of Claim paragraphs 81-84. (I interpose that we have not seen the Re-Amended Particulars of Claim, for which permission was granted by paragraph 1 of the Deputy Judge’s order). Mr Allister’s report was to be served by 23 June, and he was then directed to participate in and co-operate with producing a joint statement (limited to the claim in respect of the Weald Hall transactions) by 30 June 2025.[44]In a covering letter to the court dated 19 June 2025, Madison Legal further confirmed that arrangements had been made to pay Mr Allister’s fixed fee of £40,000 for drafting his report from the proceeds of various auctions held on behalf of Mrs Dewsall which had yielded around £108,000. It was also understood that his fees for preparing and attending the trial would be a further £20,000 plus expenses.[45]In these circumstances, there is no remaining issue between the parties on Ground 2 which we need to determine. Ground 3: should Mrs Dewsall be permitted to pay her legal and personal expenses from the proceeds of sale of Weald Hall?[46]As I have explained, the net proceeds of sale of Weald Hall, amounting to approximately £850,000, are currently held in court. They are subject to a proprietary claim by GIAG, which asserts that they represent the traceable proceeds of money misappropriated by Mr Dewsall. It follows that, if Mrs Dewsall were permitted to use those funds to pay her legal or other expenses, and if GIAG’s case were then upheld at trial, GIAG would in effect end up having been obliged to fund that expenditure out of assets which belonged in equity to GIAG.[47]In Frederic Marino v FM Capital Partners Ltd [2016] EWCA Civ 1301, unreported, Sales LJ (with whom Beatson and Longmore LJJ agreed) said at [18]:
“In this sort of situation, the guidance from the authorities is clear. The ordinary position is that a defendant who has resources of his own which are not affected by a good arguable claim by the claimant that they are his (the claimant’s) property should be required to use those unaffected resources to finance his legal defence and to meet his living expenses: Sundt Wrigley & Co. Ltd v Wrigley, Court of Appeal, unreported, 23 June 1993; Fitzgerald v Williams [1996] QB 657, CA; and the Ostrich Farming case [Court of Appeal, unreported, 10 December 1997]. The position where there is a proprietary freezing injunction is thus to be distinguished from that in which there is a general personal freezing injunction imposed under the court’s Mareva jurisdiction in relation to the defendant’s own assets (unaffected by any arguable proprietary claim made by the claimant), in which case the defendant is ordinarily to be given permission to draw on his resources so frozen to meet his reasonable legal and living expenses.”
[48]As Sales LJ went on to explain at [19]:
“A more difficult situation may arise if the claimant has a good arguable proprietary claim in relation to funds in the defendant’s hands and the defendant has no, or inadequate, other assets of his own unaffected by such proprietary claim from which he can meet his living and legal expenses. In that case, the court will have to weigh up the balance of justice to decide whether the defendant should then be permitted to have recourse to the proprietary assets. As Sir Thomas Bingham MR put it in Sundt Wrigley, in this situation “a careful and anxious judgment has to be made as to whether the injustice of permitting the use of funds held by the defendant is out-weighed by the possible injustice to the defendant if he is denied the opportunity of advancing what may in course turn out to be a successful defence.”
[49]Sales LJ then added, at [20]:
“In deciding whether a case falls into the first category, where the defendant has resources of his own unaffected by proprietary claims, or the second, where he does not, the authorities are again clear. The onus is on the defendant to persuade the court that he has no, or inadequate, assets of his own unaffected by proprietary claims, so that he potentially has good grounds to argue to be allowed to have recourse to the proprietary assets. There is obvious justice in adopting such an approach, as the defendant has full knowledge of his assets and financial position, whereas the claimant does not.”
[50]After further citations from the decisions of this court in Fitzgerald v Williams and the Ostrich Farming case, Sales LJ at [23] endorsed as a helpful summary of the proper approach the following four questions framed by Lewison J in Independent Trustee Services Ltd v GP Noble Trustees Ltd [2009] EWHC 161 (Ch) at [6]:
“(1) does the claimant have an arguable proprietary claim to the funds in issue? (2) if yes, does the defendant have arguable grounds for denying that claim? (3) if yes, has the defendant demonstrated that without the release of the funds in issue he cannot effectively defend the proceedings (or, it may be added, meet his legitimate living expenses)? (4) if yes, where does the balance of justice lie as between, on the one hand, permitting the defendant to expend funds which might belong to the claimant and, on the other hand, refusing to allow the defendant to expend funds which might belong to it?”
[51]In the present case, the Judge dealt with the issue comparatively briefly in J1 at [57] to [60]. In [58], she said this:
“In relation to funds being released, of course that has already been provided for as regards living expenses and legal expenses in the previous orders that have been made. The dispute relates to whether or not the funds to be released for legal fees should be drawn from the proceeds of sale of Weald Hall or from the sale of the jewellery. Mrs Dewsall has expressed a preference for the proceeds of sale of Weald Hall to be used and the claimant for the proceeds of the sale of jewellery to be used. The proprietary claim against Mrs Dewsall fixes specifically on a sum used to pay off a mortgage which was secured on Weald Hall and to make improvements to it; and on the proceeds of sale, monies into which it is the claimant’s case it can trace the sums misappropriated, or some of them, by Mr Dewsall. It is otherwise with the jewellery …”
[52]The Judge then said in [59] that the case advanced for Mrs Dewsall at the hearing was that she needed an upfront payment in the order of £800,000 to fund her costs of the forthcoming trial. The Judge continued:
“In my judgment, it is not the case that the whole of that sum should be provided to Mrs Dewsall at the outset, not least because that sum is evidenced by the barest of costs schedules or estimates. In my view, provision should be made for the valuation of jewellery up to that amount, with the sums following the sale of the jewellery being paid into an account with restricted access, so that it can be supervised by the claimant and by the Court, if that proves necessary …, and requests for the payment of reasonable legal expenses should be made as and when those legal fees are invoiced. 60. I direct that in relation to Mrs Dewsall’s legal expenses, they should be paid for by sale of the jewellery with the funds being paid into an account and they should be sold and topped up, as it were, in stages, as the legal fees are invoiced. I leave the parties to draft an order including such a mechanism and I encourage the parties to approach the process with a healthy dose of realism, cooperation and pragmatism.”
[53]The Judge returned to this theme the following morning in J2, after she had received the parties’ overnight written submissions and decided to impose a domestic freezing order on the Dewsalls and HRC. At the end of J2, the Judge said:
“Counsel also suggests that the Court cannot control how Mrs Dewsall chooses to fund her legal expenses provided the terms of the order are complied with; that is to say, provided she informs the Court as to the source of the money she has used for legal expenses. I have already ruled that she is not entitled to fund those expenses from the proceeds of sale of Weald Hall, in respect of which the claimant has a proprietary claim. If the claimant’s case succeeds, those monies funnelled into Weald Hall are the claimant’s misappropriated assets. It will be manifestly unfair for those assets to be dissipated in legal fees when Mrs Dewsall has other assets available. Insofar as necessary, I agree with the submissions of the claimant regarding the higher test to be applied to using proprietary assets to fund legal expenses, but in any event, in the exercise of any discretion that I have, then my judgment and my ruling yesterday on how to fund Mrs Dewsall’s legal expenses stands, and I direct that they should not be funded by plundering the proceeds of sale of Weald Hall.”
[54]I comment at this point that, although the Judge had arguably not expressly ruled in J1 that Mrs Dewsall was not entitled to fund her legal expenses from the proceeds of sale of Weald Hall, I think that on a fair reading such a ruling was implicit in the directions which the Judge gave for the sale of jewellery up to the full value of the £800,000 which Mrs Dewsall said she needed, and for the proceeds of such sales to be used to defray the invoiced legal expenses on a stage by stage basis. It is also clear that the Judge had received legal submissions from GIAG on what she termed “the higher test” to be applied to the use of assets subject to a proprietary claim to fund legal expenses: see section 14.4 of GIAG’s skeleton argument for the hearing on 21 February 2025, which quoted a helpful summary of the relevant principles given by Nugee J in the unreported case of Kea Investments v Watson [2020] EWHC 472 (Ch). It seems clear to me, therefore, that the Judge must have been satisfied, on the strength of the evidence before her, that:(a) GIAG had a good arguable proprietary claim to the net proceeds of sale of Weald Hall;(b) Mrs Dewsall had an arguable defence to that claim which could only be resolved at trial;(c) she owned valuable jewellery which was not subject to any proprietary claim by GIAG and which could in principle be sold to fund her defence; and(d) she had failed to discharge the burden of showing, if she could, that without access to the proceeds of sale of Weald Hall she would be unable to fund her defence. The effect of Mrs Dewsall’s undertaking to the court in the Consent Order[55]It is now necessary to consider whether, and if so how, the basic position which I have outlined above is affected by the terms of the undertaking given to the court by Mrs Dewsall on 17 August 2023. I have already set out the terms of her undertaking at [6] above. It remains in place, and it has never been varied. For present purposes, the critical wording is the proviso contained in paragraph 6, which for convenience I will repeat:
“Nothing in the undertaking given at paragraph 5 above will prevent [Mrs] Dewsall from dealing with the Proceeds of Sale in a manner consistent with the exceptions permitted by paragraphs 12-15 of the WFO, had she been a respondent to the WFO.”
The relevant exception in WFO 1 is that contained in paragraph 12, which I have set out at [7] above. It authorises expenditure of “a reasonable sum on legal advice and representation”, including expenses “in relation to any defence to the claim”, subject to the condition that before spending any money Mrs Dewsall must tell GIAG’s legal representatives “where the money is to come from”.[56]It is also material to bear in mind that, at the date of the Consent Order, Mrs Dewsall had not been joined as a party to the proceedings, nor had she been a respondent to WFO 1; hence the need to hypothesise that she had been a respondent when construing and applying paragraph 6 of her undertaking (“had she been a respondent to the WFO”).[57]It seemed to us that the terms of the undertaking, properly construed, might support an argument that the parties had agreed to compromise the application of Mr and Mrs Dewsall for the discharge of WFO 1 (referred to in the second recital of the Consent Order) by the giving of their respective undertakings to the court, and that the express terms of paragraph 6, read with paragraph 12 of WFO 1, might explicitly permit the net proceeds of sale of Weald Hall to be used to fund Mrs Dewsall’s legal and personal expenses, provided only that GIAG’s solicitors were informed in advance. On this view of the matter, the general principles which normally apply in relation to the funding of legal expenses from assets subject to a proprietary claim were overridden, or at least heavily qualified, by the express agreement made between the parties, and the court had no business to interfere with the contractual regime which they had put in place and which the court itself had been willing to embody in the Consent Order.[58]Further support for this argument may be found, as counsel for Mrs Dewsall submitted, in the decision of Miles J in AB and Others v CD and Others [2023] EWHC 2419 (Ch). In that case, the first defendant (“D1”) asked the court to vary a proprietary freezing order (“PFO”) made in July 2021 so as to permit D1 to realise the assets covered by it and pay the net proceeds to a firm of solicitors as legal fees. D1 also sought a like variation of a WFO made against him. The claims made against D1 included (as here) claims to recover the traceable proceeds of certain funds, but (unlike the present case) it was common ground that D1 did not have any property other than those traceable proceeds: see [8]. Both the PFO and the WFO contained standard form exclusions allowing D1 to spend a reasonable sum on legal advice and representation. D1’s application was opposed by the claimant, which argued that the applicable test for determining whether funds caught by a PFO ought to be released was the four-stage test set out by Sales LJ in the Marino case at [23]: see [50] above.[59]The first issue considered by Miles J was the right interpretation of the standard form exception in paragraph 5 of the PFO, which corresponded to the exception in paragraph 12 of WFO 1 in our case. Miles J rejected the argument for the claimants that the reasonable sum which D1 could spend on legal expenses was shorthand for the sum that would have been released to D1 by the court under the principles in stage 4 of Marino. He reasoned at [55] that the meaning of paragraph 5 of the PFO must be the same as the meaning of the identically worded exception to the WFO. He said that “[t]here were two injunctions in place and I find it impossible to think that the identical words in the two orders should be read differently.” He also rejected the argument that paragraph 5 must be interpreted differently because the order was expressed to be a proprietary one, and the parties recognised in the recitals that there were no free assets which were not subject to the claims, holding that there was no inconsistency between paragraph 5 and the rest of the order, and although it might well be said that such a paragraph was highly unusual, it was not impossible for parties to agree such a regime by negotiation: see [56].[60]Elsewhere in his judgment, Miles J considered the court’s approach to legal expenses under non-proprietary freezing orders (see [45] to [48]), referring to the summary of the relevant principles by David Richards J in HMRC v Begum [2010] EWHC 2186 (Ch). Miles J derived five propositions from that summary, which I will set out (without the paragraph references to Begum) because Mr Feetham KC placed considerable reliance on them in his submissions to us:
“First, neither the claimant nor the court is entitled to control the defendant’s choice of solicitors and counsel and the payment of proper costs or the way in which they conduct the case. Second, the court will not give the claimant the right to require a solicitor and own client assessment of the defendant’s costs or a right to such an assessment. Third, the court will not itself perform the function of a provisional assessor of costs. Fourth, the court will not in general impose a cap on the defendant’s costs… Fifth, the protection to which the claimant is entitled is in general that provided in the standard form of freezing order, which is to the effect that the defendant may use the frozen assets for the payment of his reasonable legal costs provided that he informs the claimant as to the source of those payments. The word “reasonable” gives protection because the solicitor is an officer of the court and should know that only reasonable costs could be paid, the final sanction for breach being contempt proceedings.”

Fourth, the court will not in general impose a cap on the defendant’s costs…

[61]In his oral submissions to us, Mr Auld KC submitted that the undertakings in the Consent Order had been offered and accepted on a false basis due to non-disclosure by the Dewsalls, and argued that the undertakings could in principle be set aside on those grounds. He had to accept, however, that no such application had ever been made. More generally, he emphasised that the undertakings had been given at a very early stage, before Mrs Dewsall had been joined as a party, and before any claim had been pleaded against her. He suggested that matters had in practice moved on to such an extent that the Judge was entitled to disregard the undertakings when considering the legal funding position. When the Consent Order was made, the parties could never reasonably have contemplated that the proceeds of sale of Weald Hall, which are now represented by money in court and which can therefore only be dealt with by permission of the court, should be at the free disposal of Mrs Dewsall to fund her defence at a time when a sustainable proprietary claim has been pleaded in relation to those proceeds.[62]Mr Auld KC referred us, in this connection, to a witness statement filed by Rachel Neeson of Madison Legal on 17 February 2025 in support of various timetable applications made by Mrs Dewsall, in which the writer clearly assumed that the normal principles relating to the payment of legal fees out of assets which are subject to a proprietary injunction would apply, and that Mrs Dewsall would have to demonstrate that without the release of the proceeds of Weald Hall she could not effectively defend the proceedings. Ms Neeson continued, in para 26:
“Given that Mrs Dewsall also owns valuable jewellery which is injuncted but not subject to a proprietary claim, we apprehend that the point that will be made by the Claimant is that her legal costs should be funded out of the sale proceeds of the jewellery. Mrs Dewsall’s principal position is that the sale of the jewellery will take time, and that further delay prejudices the ability of her lawyers to properly prepare her defence …”
There was no suggestion that Mrs Dewsall had a cast-iron claim to be entitled to use the proceeds of Weald Hall by virtue of the undertaking which she had given in the Consent Order. Discussion[63]I have not found this an easy question, but in the end I have concluded that the argument for Mrs Dewsall makes insufficient allowance for the context in which her undertaking was given, and for the wording of the undertaking read as a whole. The undertaking was given by her as a non-party, at a time when the only defendants were her husband and Mr Hirschfield. It was already obvious, however, that Weald Hall would play a major part in the proceedings, not least because it was expressly included as one of the assets frozen by WFO 1: see paragraph 6(a)(i), which referred to “Weald Hall … or the net sale money after payment of any mortgages if it has been sold”. It should therefore have been clear to the Dewsalls that some form of proprietary relief might well be sought in due course over the property or its proceeds, and this was in my view reinforced by the detailed provision made in paragraphs 3 and 4 of Mr Dewsall’s undertaking in the Consent Order, which allowed the Dewsalls to market and sell the property at arm’s length provided various conditions were fulfilled: see [5] above. This strong proprietary focus was then maintained in the first paragraph of Mrs Dewsall’s undertaking (i.e. paragraph 5 of the Consent Order).[64]Against this background, the natural expectation of the parties would in my judgment have been that Mrs Dewsall’s preserved entitlement to deal with the net proceeds of sale of Weald Hall “in a manner consistent” with paragraph 12 of WFO 1 would be subject to the usual Marino principles, and would therefore depend on whether GIAG had a good arguable proprietary claim to the proceeds at any future time when Mrs Dewsall might wish to have recourse to those proceeds to fund her legal and/or living expenses. Such an interpretation would be consistent with the standard form exception in paragraph 12, and it would also reflect the carefully calibrated principles which the courts have developed in cases of this nature. Further, the mere fact that Mr and Mrs Dewsall had agreed to give undertakings to the court does not support the inference that, viewed objectively, they might reasonably have sought to be subject to a less stringent regime than the Marino principles. It is trite law that an undertaking given to the court is in all material respects equivalent in its force and effect to an injunction, and that it may be enforced in the same way.[65]In my view, such an interpretation would give full force to the hypothesis that Mrs Dewsall should be treated in the same way as if she had been a respondent to WFO 1, and it would also be “consistent with”, but would not go beyond, the usual principles applied by the court where a party to proceedings wishes to fund his legal costs from assets subject to a PFO.[66]It is true that, in the AB v CD case, Miles J reached a different conclusion on the construction of the standard form paragraph 12 wording as it applied in the context of that case. But the facts were strikingly different from those of the present case. Unlike Mrs Dewsall, D1 was already subject to a PFO, and it was also agreed that he had no free assets which were not so subject. Moreover, D1 was also subject to a WFO which contained an identically worded exception for legal and living expenses, and Miles J was understandably reluctant to adopt a construction which might appear to give the same wording different meanings depending on the type of injunction it is attached to. But every case depends on its own facts, and I do not believe that Miles J was intending to lay down an interpretation of the standard form wording which would hold good regardless of the context in which the question might arise. And in any event, his decision is not binding on this court, although his careful and thoughtful judgment is of course entitled to great respect.[67]It is also worth noting that, after ruling on the true construction of the relevant exclusion, Miles J did not regard that as “the end of the analysis”, for two reasons: see his judgment at [60]. First, D1 was seeking the court’s assistance by making variations to the PFO, and the court could only properly do so if persuaded that the orders sought were “just and proper”: [61]. Secondly, the case law summarised in the Begum case “shows that there may be exceptional circumstances or special cases where the court will take a more interventionist approach to the respective rights of the parties”: [62]. Since all of D1’s assets were subject to a proprietary claim, the case might be one of the type described by Millett LJ in the Ostrich case “of one man using another’s property to defend himself”: [63]. Miles J went on to recognise, in [64], that the relevant case law “allows for the different treatment of the reasonableness of costs in special or exceptional cases”, saying that the court should only exercise its discretion to make variations favourable to a defendant “if reasonably satisfied on proper evidence that the costs sought to be spent are reasonable in amount”: [64]. He added (ibid): “Hence though there is no difference in meaning between the exceptions in the PFO and the WFO, the approach of the court to disputes about the application of the concept of reasonableness depends on the particular circumstances. Those circumstances can in my judgment include the existence of the proprietary claims”.[68]Miles J then considered the question of reasonableness in some detail, including what the position would have been under the relevant Marino principles: see [65] to [91].[69]Returning to the present case, I consider that, properly construed, Mrs Dewsall’s undertaking not only does not preclude, but on the contrary it requires, application of the usual Marino principles in relation to her proposed use of the net proceeds of sale of Weald Hall to fund her defence. On that basis, the Judge was in my view fully entitled, in the exercise of her discretion, to craft the order and give the bespoke directions relating to the jewellery which she did. This can hardly have come as a surprise to Mrs Dewsall, given that the position was correctly understood by Ms Neeson of Madison Legal in her written evidence in support of Mrs Dewsall’s timetable applications in February 2025: see [62] above.

Ground 4: the conditions attached by the Judge to the sale of Mrs Dewsall’s jewellery

[70]I can dispose of this ground very shortly. As I have already indicated, I consider that the Judge acted well within the scope of her discretion when giving the directions concerning the jewellery contained in schedule G to the Freezing Order. The mechanism thus put in place was intended to protect the interests of GIAG while enabling the jewellery to be sold in an orderly fashion. The mechanism has worked reasonably well in practice, and it has yielded (at least) the sum of around £108,000 referred to in Madison Legal’s letter to the court of 19 June 2025. Given the concealment of the jewellery by Mrs Dewsall until it was discovered upon execution of the Search Order, and the general history of dissipation of assets which I have described, it was in my judgment eminently reasonable to impose requirements of this nature, even on the assumption (favourable to Mrs Dewsall) that the jewellery was her separate property and was not subject to any proprietary claim.[71]I can see no possible basis for interfering with this sensible exercise by the Judge of her wide case-management powers. I would also echo the salutary warning given by Lewison LJ (with whom Kitchin and Moore-Bick LJJ agreed) in Abdulle v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis: Practice Note [2015] EWCA Civ 1260, [2016] 1 WLR 898, at [24] to [29] about the need for this court to respect robust and fair case management decisions by first-instance judges if satellite appeals are to be avoided. Ground 5: the Judge’s order that Mr and Mrs Dewsall should pay the costs of GIAG’s application of 3 February 2025 in relation to the documents to be disclosed pursuant to the Search Order.[72]The order which Mrs Dewsall here seeks to challenge was made in paragraph 30 of the Judge’s order dated 6 March 2025. It ordered Mr and Mrs Dewsall to pay the costs of GIAG’s application dated 3 February 2025, to be assessed if not agreed. No payment on account was directed.[73]We have not seen GIAG’s application, but we have in our bundles the 19th witness statement of Mr Meredith, also dated 3 February 2025, in support of the application which explained its purpose as being to “expedite the provision of seized materials” from the Search Order and to explain the difficulties faced by Rosling King LLP “in bringing fruition to the Court’s intentions in granting that Order” (paragraph 6). Mr Meredith then identified the issues which had arisen, including numerous assertions of privilege by the Dewsalls and the need to identify appropriate search terms in reviewing the very extensive archive of seized documents held by the supervising solicitors. Urgent resolution of these issues was needed, in view of the impending trial date in July 2025.[74]Directions were duly given by the Judge on the application, against which no appeal has been brought. She also dealt very briefly with the costs of the application, at a remote hearing on Wednesday 26 February 2025 attended by junior counsel for GIAG and Mrs Dewsall, and by Mr Dewsall in person. We were shown the relevant part of the transcript, where the Judge made the order now under appeal but declined to order a payment on account in the absence of any evidence or costs schedule to support it. On behalf of GIAG, Mr Benson submitted that the Dewsalls should be ordered to pay the costs of the application because GIAG was in substance the winner and nothing would have been achieved without GIAG’s initiative in pushing the matter forward. He was content to leave the question of a payment on account to the Judge’s good judgment. On behalf of Mrs Dewsall, Mr Benton said that the costs should be reserved. The Judge then gave her decision, as reflected in her order of 6 March.[75]I am satisfied that this ground of appeal is hopeless. The Judge must be assumed to have had the full circumstances of the application in her mind when she made her costs order, and we are in no position to differ from her conclusion that an immediate costs order should be made in favour of GIAG. The breadth of the discretion on costs vested in a first-instance judge is too well-known to need repetition, and the comments which I have already made about the need to avoid satellite appeals apply to this ground with as much force as they apply to ground 4.

Overall conclusion

[76]I would dismiss all five grounds of appeal.[77]I have not so far referred to an application by Mrs Dewsall to adduce fresh evidence on the appeal in the form of a further witness statement of Ms Neeson (her third), the purpose of which was to provide updated information to assist the court in its consideration of the grounds of appeal. The application was explicitly not intended to engage the familiar Ladd v Marshall criteria for the admission of further evidence on an appeal, but rather to provide relevant context and understanding of the issues in the appeal, for example in relation to the sale of the jewellery and recent developments in related proceedings in the British Virgin Islands.[78]I have some doubts about the relevance or helpfulness of some of this evidence, but I would be content to admit it for what it is worth, while reserving the question of the costs incurred in its production for consideration in the usual way after our judgments have been circulated to the parties’ legal representatives prior to hand down.

Asplin LJ:

[79]I agree.

Lewison LJ:

[80]I also agree.