“If you wish to make an application of any kind it seems to be in relation to enforcement or in relation to contempt of court, I think that needs to be properly formulated on notice, and I need to have it spelled out with a skeleton argument and everything else so that I have the opportunity to consider it against all the documents that I have seen for the first time today.”
“His examination has been completed. If it hadn’t been, there wouldn’t be an application of the kind being made. It would be continuing with more questions to be asked.”
“It would, at the least, be curious for the court to have jurisdiction to make the CPR Pt 71 order but to lack jurisdiction to enforce compliance with it. That there may be other occasions… where there are mis-matches between the jurisdiction to make an order and the ability to enforce it, seems to me to be neither here nor there; certainly there is no attraction in shaping a policy to increase the number of such examples.”
“This Part contains rules which provide for a judgment debtor to be required to attend court to provide information, for the purpose of enabling a judgment creditor to enforce a judgment or order against him.”
“To my mind there must be inherent in that power, the power to make all such ancillary orders as appear to the court to be just and convenient, to ensure that the exercise of the Mareva jurisdiction is effective to achieve its purpose.” [Emphasis in the original].
“In so far as Mr Stamler contends that there is inherent jurisdiction in the court to make effective the remedies that it grants, this seems to me merely another way of submitting that, where the power exists to grant the remedy, there must also be inherent in that power the power to make ancillary orders to make that remedy effective. This I have accepted.”
“In my judgment a judge has the duty to prevent his court being misused as far as the law allows, but the means by which he can perform that duty are limited by the authority of Parliament, or the rules of his court and of decided cases. Those means do, however, include what is reasonably necessary to performing effectively a judge’s duties and exercising his powers. In doing what appears to him just or convenient he cannot overstep their lawful authorised limits, but he can do what makes their performance and exercise effective. He has a judicial discretion to implement a lawful order by ancillary orders obviously required for their efficacy, even though not previously made or expressly authorised. This implied jurisdiction, inherent because implicit in powers already recognised and exercised, and so different from any general or residual inherent jurisdiction, is hard to define and is to be assumed with caution. But to deny this kind of inherent jurisdiction altogether would be to refuse to judges incidental powers recognised as inherent or implicit in statutory powers granted to public authorities, to shorten the arm of justice and to diminish the value of the courts.” [Emphasis added].
“something that has no function or purpose without the thing to which it is incidental or ancillary”
“… in my judgment the English court has power over persons properly subject to its in personam jurisdiction to make ancillary orders in protection of its jurisdiction and its processes, including the integrity of its judgments.”
“In the light of the jurisprudence cited above it seems to me to be impossible to submit that the court lacks jurisdiction, whether under section 37 of the 1981 Act or under its own inherent jurisdiction, to do what is just and convenient and necessary to protect its own orders and to give effect to the interests of justice. AJ Bekhor & Co Ltd v Bilton[1981] QB 923 specifically considered these matters, and the question has never been doubted since.”
“The jurisprudence cited above is replete with confirmation of the power possessed by the court to make such orders as are necessary to make its own orders effective. At any stage of the developing jurisprudence it might have been said (and often was) that novelty was a bar to some particular order. The Mareva injunction was attacked on that basis. Then it was said that it could not be made effective by the inclusion of disclosure orders in support of it. In the present case, the question is whether the power to commit for contempt of court includes a power to order the contemnor to surrender to the tipstaff and to make that a condition of something else. I can see no reason why not. The question whether such an order can be properly made in a particular case, is a further question which I consider below.”
“The judge was essentially only asking Mr Ablyazov to do what he had always been ordered to do, and he was prepared to give him a last chance, but a real chance, of doing so. In the light of the litigation that had taken place, there was a substantial risk that Mr Ablyazov’s non-disclosure and dealing with assets was pervasive and corrosive to justice. The authorities demonstrate that it is vital for the court, in the interests of justice, to have effective powers, and effective sanctions. Without these, it would be possible for a defendant (or, in a different situation, a claimant) to flout the orders of the court, which are the court’s considered means by which to keep the scales of justice for the parties even. If once it became known that the court was unable or unwilling to maintain the effectiveness of its orders, then it would lose all control over litigation of this kind, with terrible consequences for the administration of justice. Those wrongly accused of fraud would be relieved of a certain amount of inconvenience, but fraudsters would rejoice and hitch a free ride to interminable litigation on the back of ill-gotten gains.” [Emphasis added].
“It is difficult to imagine a party to commercial litigation who has acted with more cynicism, opportunism and deviousness towards court orders than Mr Ablyazov. Rix LJ has described in trenchant terms the factors which cause me to express myself in this way. There can be no complaint that Teare J decided that the court’s powers should be deployed so as to put the maximum pressure on Mr Ablyazov to comply with its orders so as to endeavour to prevent its fair procedures from being subverted.”
“Unless paragraph 3 applies, where the permission of the court is required for a claim form to be served out of the jurisdiction, the permission of the court must also be obtained for service out of the jurisdiction of any other document to be served in the proceedings”