Senior-Milne, R (on the application of) v HM Treasury (Rev 1) [2013] EWHC 1007 (Admin)

Case No CO/7733/2011[2013] EWHC 1007 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Sitting at:
Venue Leeds Combined Court
1 Oxford Row
Venue LeedsDate Tuesday 26 th February 2013
West Yorkshire
LS1 3BG
Before
THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE HADDON-CAVE
Between
THE QUEEN ON THE APPLICATION OF SENIOR-MILNEClaimantHM TreasuryDefendant
(DAR Transcript ofWordWave International LimitedA Merrill Communications Company165 Fleet Street, London EC4A 2DYTel No: 020 7404 1400 Fax No: 020 7404 1424Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)
The Claimant appeared in person for in personMr Vinall (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for Defendant.
Judgment

Introduction

[1]Mr Graham Nassau Gordon Senior-Milne is a serial litigator. His activities stretch back to 2007. His latest contribution to jurisprudence has been to send an email to the court office at Leeds which says that the judicial system in this country is “completely corrupt". His activities bear all the hallmarks of a classic obsessive litigator. The remarkable features of this case in particular are:(1) the sheer scale and variety of the litigation proceedings which he has brought;(2) his determination to relitigate every substantive and procedural decision against him;(3) the personalising of his attacks and abuse towards judges and court staff, despite the unfailing courtesy and patience which he has been shown time and time again; and(4) his totally myopic view of the world through the prism of self, without any sense of personal responsibility or regard to the rights of others or other users of the courts. MR SENIOR-MILNE: If you are going to impose a civil restraint order I have a right to make representations beforehand, so could you give me notice of that. MR JUSTICE HADDON-CAVE: Indeed. Mr Senior-Milne, it will be my intention to hear you as to why an extended civil restraint order should not be imposed on you. We will deal with that after this judgment on your applications, today.[2]The sad fact is that Mr Senior-Milne, who has not inconsiderable abilities, seems to have wasted a great deal of his own and the court's time over many years in serially litigating. He has, it appears, found the European Convention on Human Rights to be a useful weapon. He has, however, a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the ECHR, which includes important principles of proportionality as well as the requirement to balance of one person's rights against another.[3]Mr Senior-Milne has boasted in his latest witness statement and elsewhere that he is unemployed, has virtually no assets, has put all his property, assets and possessions into trust in 2004, has debts to banks and credit card companies in excess of £20,000 and there is, therefore, no point in trying to recover any costs from him. He seems to use that as a threat that he is somehow inviolable and can litigate anywhere against anybody at will.[4]His activities have small beginnings, which appear to be in 2007 when he had a minor altercation with a traffic warden regarding a parking offence and was charged and under section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. He was found guilty of that offence by the magistrate but he managed to have his conviction overturn by the Crown Court. In 2007 he brought a judicial review against Northumbria University. In 2010 he brought a judicial review of the Ministry of Justice regarding civil restraint orders imposed upon him.

Proceedings against ICA

[5]In 2010 he commenced one of the two proceedings that is before me today, a judicial review of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales in respect of guarantee annuity rates liabilities. In 2011 he brought a further judicial review against the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales in respect of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 2006 audit of Northern Rock and a 2008 audit of Lloyds TSB.

Proceedings against HM Treasury

[6]In 2011 he commenced the second proceeding in with which I am concerned today, a judicial review against HM Treasury. On 12 August 2011 Mr Senior-Milne issued a claim form seeking permission to claim judicial review of the decision of the Chancellor of the Exchequer “to support the European Central Bank's purchase of bonds of Eurozone member states” and seeking wide-ranging relief.

Procedural history of proceedings against Treasury

[7]On 16 August 2011 HHJ Behrens refused Mr Senior-Milne's application for expedition and interim relief in the second set of proceedings and said it was “misconceived and totally without merit”.[8]On 6 September 2011 the defendant, Her Majesty's Treasury, filed an Acknowledgement of Service and Summary Grounds of Resistance. On 20 September 2011 HHJ Belcher refused permission on paper, stating that the case was considered to be totally without merit. On 5 October 2011 Mr Senior-Milne's Notice of Renewal of application for permission was lodged. In April 2012 an oral permission hearing was adjourned on Mr Senior-Milne's application because his mother was ill. The hearing was subsequently relisted for 19 October 2012. On 18 October 2012 Mr Senior-Milne sent an email stating “I regret that due to illness I will be unable to attend the hearings tomorrow".[9]On 18 October 2012 the matter came before HHJ Langan QC. He made the following[10]On the same day the other matter also came before HHJ Langan, namely the proceedings brought by Mr Senior-Milne against the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (CO/6650/2011).[11]Previous to this,(i) a renewed application for permission to apply for judicial review had been lodged on 17 July 2011;(ii) permission had been refused by HHJ Behrens on 16 August 2011; and(iii) on 16 April 2012 HHJ Behrens had granted the claimant's request for the matter to be stayed for three months for personal reasons. When the matter came before HHJ Langan QC on 18 October 2012, he made a similar order as in the Treasury matter requiring the claimant to file and serve a witness statement supported by medical evidence explaining his inability to attend court on 19 October 2012.[12]On 18 October 2012 it appears that the claimant issued correspondence in which he made it clear that he did not have the relevant medical evidence because he had not sought to obtain it.

Order of 1 November 2012

[13]On 1 November 2012 HHJ Langan QC signed the following identical orders in those proceedings (that is, proceedings CO/7733/2011, the HM Treasury proceedings and CO/6650/2011, the Institute of Chartered Accountants proceedings). That order read as follows: “On the application for permission to apply for judicial review following consideration of the order dated 18 October 2012 subsequent correspondence between the claimant and the court and the statement of the claimant dated 23 October 2012 ordered by HHJ Langan QC it is declared that, the claimant having failed to serve a witness statement which satisfies the requirements of the order dated 18 October, his claim was at 12 noon on 26 October 2012 dismissed. This order was made without hearing submissions of the party to be made within seven days after service make application to have it discharged or varied." That is how matters currently stand.

Mr Senior Milne’s applications

[14]The claimant, Mr Senior-Milne, on 12 November 2012 issued application notices in both actions seeking to overturn, or have a reconsideration of, the orders of 1 November 2012. Mr Vinall, counsel who appears today for HM Treasury, points out that it is the underlying operative order of 18 October 2012 in both actions which is the relevant order but takes no point on that and accepts that Mr Senior-Milne's challenge is in relation to both.[15]Before me today Mr Senior-Milne, who is a self-represented party, has made a number of points in relation to the orders by way of submissions as to why he says that these orders were unlawful and should be quashed. He peppered his submissions with comments such as “I am dealing with a justice service which is criminal" and that he had come across cases of “judicial murder".[16]He sent to the court a 74-page, 237 paragraph, submission, which I have read. He made four points, each of which I will now deal with. The first was that the relevant orders of HHJ Langan, no doubt whether dated 18 October or 1 November 2012, were not sealed. For this reason he said that they were therefore not enforceable. As Mr Vinall points out, under the rules of court, in particular CPR 40.2, it is the substance of the matter which matters not the form in this context and an order is what the judge does and says. Whether or not orders are in fact formally sealed does not go to their essential validity. Furthermore, as he points out, it is quite clear that Mr Senior-Milne was very well aware of the orders that were made on 18 October 2012 because he commented on them on the following day in correspondence. I agree there is no substance in Mr Senior Milne’s first point.[17]Mr Senior-Milne's second point was that the orders of HHJ Langan were “too vague to be enforceable” and too vague to be the subject of an unless order. Mr Vinall said that, whilst it may be that the orders made by HHJ Langan were not absolutely clear, any unclarity can be dealt with by simply removing the words “full and satisfactory” and, since this is by way of a rehearing of the matter as to what order should or should not have been made on that date, there is no problem about doing that.[18]It seems to me, however, that the orders made by HHJ Langan on 18 October were clear. I see no difficulty whatsoever in an order including an unless order which says that there should be a “full and satisfactory” explanation supported by medical evidence of a litigant's failure to attend court. The orders are not in any sense vague. On the contrary they are admirably clear and should have been complied with if the claimant did not wish his application to stand dismissed.[19]Mr Senior-Milne's third point is that it is “illegal to issue retrospective medical certificates". It is not clear how this submission helps him. He was required to do was to file and serve a witness statement which contained a full and satisfactory explanation of his inability to attend court on the 19 October 2012 and obtain medical certificates which specified the condition which has prevented him from so attending and an estimate of when he would be well enough to attend at court. There is nothing preventing Mr Senior-Milne from obtaining such a certificate from his doctor or doctors. It is clear from correspondence that took place on 19 October 2012 that the only thing preventing him was the fact that he had not sought such medical evidence.[20]His fourth and final point was that he had in fact complied with the order because he had produced to the court various emails regarding the medical conditions and heart conditions from which he says he has been suffering, it appears, for some considerable period of time, and which he blames the court system because of the stress to which he says he has been subjected.[21]There are three particular problems about that submission: First, is that these documents were only sent to the court two or three days ago under cover of an email, i.e. several months after the deadline of 26 October 2012 specified by HHJ Langan. Secondly, the documents relate to 2009, 2010 and 2011 and do not begin to address what HHJ Langan specified, namely the reasons evidence as to why he was prevented from attending on 19 October 2012. And thirdly, the documents relate to different cases.[22]Mr Vinall submits that the order should be upheld of HHJ Langan. The fact is that the claimant, Mr Senior-Milne, could have provided medical evidence and chose not to. I agree.[23]The position in this case in relation to these two applications is all too clear. The orders that were made were valid, sensible and appropriate. There was non-compliance with them. It followed that HHJ Langan was entirely right on 1 November 2012 to certify that, the claimant having failed to comply to satisfy the requirements of the order of 18 October 2012, the claims in CO/7733/2011 and CO/6650/2011... MR SENIOR-MILNE: Excuse me, I've got to leave. MR JUSTICE HADDON-CAVE: Please don’t interrupt.24. ...stood dismissed. Mr Senior-Milne could have made a further application for relief from sanctions under Rule 3.9 but chose not to do so. If he had made such an application it would have been dismissed.25. Decision[24]For the above reasons, both Mr Senior Milne’s applications are dismissed.

Postcript

[25]All that therefore leaves is two matters: firstly an application by Mr Vinall's clients, HM Treasury, for costs against Mr Senior-Milne. And secondly a matter which I have presaged with Mr Senior-Milne and I will hear submissions on now as to why, in the light of his history of vexatious litigation which he has occupied a great deal of public time and cost, he should not be subject now to an extended civil restraint order. I will now hear submissions on, firstly, costs. Mr Vinall?

order

“Unless by 1200 hours on 26 October 2012 the claimant files and serves a witness statement (endorsed with a signed statement of truth) which 1) contains a full and satisfactory explanation of his inability to attend court on 19 October 2012 and 2) is supported by a medical certificate which specifies the condition which has prevented him from so attending and contains an estimate of when he will be well enough to attend the application will at that time stand dismissed without further order and the defendant may make such application for costs as it considers appropriate” That order was made without hearing submissions of the parties. The judge said Mr Senior Milne had seven days to apply to have the order discharged or varied. Procedural history of proceedings against ICT