"He was educated at Heaton Moor College, and set to work in the post-war years buying and selling cloth and dabbling in local property, before moving to London. He first came to wider prominence in the early 1970s as the force behind a fast-growing, Knightsbridge-based “fringe bank”, Dalton Barton Securities, which he and his business partner, Stanley Van Gelder, sold for£58 million in late 1972 to Keyser Ullmann, the bank chaired by Edward du Cann, MP."
"A party may believe he can show without a trial that an opponent’s case has no real prospect of success on the facts, or that the case is bound to succeed or fail, as the case may be, because of a point of law (including the construction of a document). In such a case the party concerned may make an application under rule 3.4 or Part 24 (or both) as he thinks appropriate."
"A party may believe that it can be shown without the need for a hearing that an opponent's case has no real prospect of success on the facts, or that the case is bound to succeed or fail, as the case may be, because of a point of law (including the construction of a document). In such a case the party concerned may make an application under rule 4.4."
"I suggest that Rule 4.4(1) of the family rules has to be construed without reference to real prospects of success. The three sets of facts set out in paragraph 2.1 ofPractice Direction 4A exemplify the limited reach of rule 4.4(1)(a), valuable though no doubt it sometimes is. The touchstone is, in the words of paragraph 2.1(c) of the Practice Direction, whether the application is legally recognisable. Applications made after the applicant had remarried or after an identical application had been dismissed or otherwise finally determined would be examples of applications not legally recognisable. Since the greater includes the lesser, it is no doubt possible to describe applications which fall foul of Rule 4.4(1) as having no real prospect of success. Nevertheless paragraph 2.4 of the Practice Direction remains in my view an unhelpful curiosity which cannot override the inevitable omission from the family rules of a power to give summary judgment."
"The court may give summary judgment against a claimant or defendant on the whole of a claim or on a particular issue if – (a) it considers that – (i) that [the] claimant has no real prospect of succeeding on the claim or issue; or (ii) that [the] defendant has no real prospect of successfully defending the claim or issue; and (b) there is no other compelling reason why the case or issue should be disposed of at a trial."
"The words 'no real prospect of succeeding' do not need any amplification, they speak for themselves. The word "real" distinguishes fanciful prospects of success or ... they direct the court to the need to see whether there is a "realistic" as opposed to a "fanciful" prospect of success."
"The criterion which the judge has to apply underCPR Part 24 is not one of probability; it is absence of reality."
" .. the court must be careful before giving summary judgment on a claim. The correct approach on applications by defendants is, in my judgment, as follows: i) The court must consider whether the claimant has a "realistic" as opposed to a "fanciful" prospect of success: Swain v Hillman[2001] 1 All ER 91 ; ii) A "realistic" claim is one that carries some degree of conviction. This means a claim that is more than merely arguable: ED & F Man Liquid Products v Patel[2003] EWCA Civ 472 at [8]; iii) In reaching its conclusion the court must not conduct a "mini-trial": Swain v Hillman; iv) This does not mean that the court must take at face value and without analysis everything that a claimant says in his statements before the court. In some cases it may be clear that there is no real substance in factual assertions made, particularly if contradicted by contemporaneous documents: ED & F Man Liquid Products v Patel at [10]; v) However, in reaching its conclusion the court must take into account not only the evidence actually placed before it on the application for summary judgment, but also the evidence that can reasonably be expected to be available at trial: Royal Brompton Hospital NHS Trust v Hammond (No 5)[2001] EWCA Civ 550 ; vi) Although a case may turn out at trial not to be really complicated, it does not follow that it should be decided without the fuller investigation into the facts at trial than is possible or permissible on summary judgment. Thus the court should hesitate about making a final decision without a trial, even where there is no obvious conflict of fact at the time of the application, where reasonable grounds exist for believing that a fuller investigation into the facts of the case would add to or alter the evidence available to a trial judge and so affect the outcome of the case: Doncaster Pharmaceuticals Group Ltd v Bolton Pharmaceutical Co 100 Ltd[2007] FSR 63 ; vii) On the other hand it is not uncommon for an application under Part 24 to give rise to a short point of law or construction and, if the court is satisfied that it has before it all the evidence necessary for the proper determination of the question and that the parties have had an adequate opportunity to address it in argument, it should grasp the nettle and decide it. The reason is quite simple: if the respondent's case is bad in law, he will in truth have no real prospect of succeeding on his claim or successfully defending the claim against him, as the case may be. Similarly, if the applicant's case is bad in law, the sooner that is determined, the better. If it is possible to show by evidence that although material in the form of documents or oral evidence that would put the documents in another light is not currently before the court, such material is likely to exist and can be expected to be available at trial, it would be wrong to give summary judgment because there would be a real, as opposed to a fanciful, prospect of success. However, it is not enough simply to argue that the case should be allowed to go to trial because something may turn up which would have a bearing on the question of construction: ICI Chemicals & Polymers Ltd v TTE Training Ltd[2007] EWCA Civ 725 ."
"The difficulty in the application of the criterion used by Part 24 is that it requires an assessment to be made in advance of a full trial as to what the outcome of such a trial would be. The pre-trial procedures give the claimant an opportunity to obtain additional evidence to support his case. The most obvious of these is discovery of documents but there is also the weapon of requesting particulars or interrogatories and the exchange of witness statements may provide a party with additional important material. Therefore the courts have … recognised that they must have regard not only to the evidence presently available to the plaintiffs but also to any realistic prospect that that evidence would have been strengthened between now and the trial."
"This does not mean that a party can successfully resist summary judgement by suggesting, like Mr Micawber, that something may turn up to save him, though he does not know what: see per Megarry V-C in Lady Anne Tennant v. Associated Newspapers Group Ltd[1979] FSR 298 : per Jacob J in World Wide Fund for Nature v. World Wrestling Federation[2002] FSR 504 , 515 ("
"The particular aspect of the court's approach to summary judgment applications about which submissions were made to me concerns what is sometimes labelled Micawberism. Put shortly, the principle is that, in order to challenge an assertion that a party has no real prospect of success, or of successfully defending, in relation to a claim or issue, it is necessary to do more than say that some evidence currently unavailable might turn up in time for the trial. The party facing the summary judgment application must, whether by evidence or submission, persuade the court that there is a sufficient prospect that material will become available in time for trial so as to afford the defendant the real prospect of a successful defence."
"There is a further reason why I am not inclined to strike out the Statement of Claim at this stage on the grounds relied upon by Mr Purvis. It seems to me that the position under the Civil Procedure Rules is somewhat different from what it was under the previous Rules of the Supreme Court. This is because under the Civil Procedure Rules, Part 31.16 enables the court to order disclosure in a case like the present to enable a potential claimant to ascertain whether he has a pleadable claim or not. Mr Purvis says of course the claimants do not apply for pre-action disclosure under Part 31.16 so I should not take this into account, but it seems to me that it is a relevant factor. Even if, which is not the case here in my judgment, the case was not pleadable and was too speculative as in the cases of A to Z Couriers and UpJohn, the courts could and would consider an application for pre-action disclosure. In my judgment, there is no reason why, in order to save costs in this case, disclosure should not be ordered now to see whether the claim is doomed to fail as the defendants implicitly suggest. It would be pointless and contrary to the over-riding objective to strike the case out and force the claimant to seek pre-action disclosure before starting the case again."
"For these reasons, therefore, I have decided that I will not strike out the action, and that I will make an order for disclosure of the material the claimant seeks, but under Part 31.12 within the action. I will hear counsel on the form of the disclosure order in due course. It seems to me also that the defendant should have an express liberty to apply to strike out the action again should the disclosure demonstrate that the pleading is unsustainable at that stage. I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not in any way pre-judging the issue of what the disclosure may show or what the facts actually are. I am simply deciding two things: (i) that on the evidence before me, as a matter of inference from the facts that the claimants have put forward, I regard the claim in paras 8 to 10 as pleadable with the exclusion of the words I have mentioned in para 10; and, (ii) that for those reasons I do not regard the claim as too speculative to go forward. That deals with the strike out application."
"The applicant must be able to show that he has some sort of prima facie case against the respondent which is more than a merely speculative punt."
"Allied is simply a trading vehicle of the Dellal family – hence the size. All the larger transactions, (Odeon/Shellmex) and investments are done through individual trusts. We have not identified which one/ones we would use for this."
"The principal matters which emerge from these attendance notes are: (i) Jack feared disclosing his assets. (ii) He did not dispute an estimate of his wealth at£400million . (iii) That he had given away a lot of his assets. He states that he gave away his shares in Allied Commercial “before his marriage”; in fact he gave them away to his children in August 2000, three years after we married. (iv) Sandra Davis advised that because of our long relationship followed by marriage (20 years in 2007), any divorce would be decided on the basis of 50%, not a needs basis. (v) It is suggested that Guy was holding monies on trust for Jack. (vi) Jack confirms that Violet is the settlor of some of the family trusts and Sandra advises that it looks “fishy”. (vii) Guy referred to me seeing Jack lose a million pounds in a casino as though it were a regular occurrence (which it was). (viii) He said he might leave me another£20million in his Will. (ix) Lorraine Dellal (the “sister in NYC”) has$50million , who if asked would say she has money from her mother. The final advice was that he should string matters out with me because the Courts could not go back more than 6 years from death. As matters transpired, it appears that that is what he did."
"(1) The sale of the Shell-Mex House initially acquired in 2002 for£327m and sold by a consortium in July 2007 for£490m . Mr Raymond’s email in 2009 shows Jack had an interest (through an offshore vehicle) in the Shell-Mex Transaction. (2) Robert Tchenguiz, another investor told the claimant that, “Jack was their co-investor, and shared the£150 million profit with the sale of the Shell-Mex Capital House when the building was sold”. Jack’s share of that investment is believed to have been£75 million . (3) A putative deal referred to as “Rompa” which was floated in response to Mr Raymond telling Mr Woolf in September 2010 that Jack had “50 million in cash in a bank account” that had been lying around doing nothing for the previous 6 or 7 years. (4) Jack had also told the claimant something similar, that he had a “secret stash” of money. (5) A€15 million Hotel Jalta/Verdi deal in Prague. (6) A€22.8 million “Big Box” deal in relation to a warehouse in Prague and the related acquisition of Silver Palm Investments. (7) A contemplated£26.5 million deal in Belgrade. (8) A contemplated€25 million residential development in Montenegro. (9) A contemplated€106 million deal in May 2009 with Tesco in the Czech Republic."
"Jack’s casino spending and his household expenditure imply an average annual spend/income of some millions (£4.5m in 2006), only a proportion of which can be explained by his ACH salary, which in 2006-07 was£50,000 before tax. The claimant's evidence is that Jack’s annual household expenditure was£1.1m p.a. Further, Jack would regularly gamble and lose large amounts. See also the note of his meeting with Mishcon de Reya. The claimant says she regularly witnessed Jack winning or losing between£600,000 and£1m a night and says that this would happen 4–5 times a year. His gambling records bear her out. They show that in 2006 he spent£3.4 million and in just one night in April 2006 Jack spent£1.7m ."
"The agent is obliged at the principal’s request, which may be made at any time, to give an account of his agency activities and to return anything received for whatever reason as a result of such activities."
"If one of the consequences of CPR Pt 22 is to exclude the possibility of pleading inconsistent factual alternatives then it will have achieved far more than the prohibition of dishonest or opportunistic claims. It will prevent even claimants in the position of an executor or liquidator from advancing alternative claims based on incomplete but plausible evidence in circumstances where they are not able to choose decisively between the rival possibilities without access to the trial processes of disclosure and cross-examination. A defendant to an honest claim will be able to compel the claimant either to choose between seemingly viable alternatives or to abandon the claim altogether. The former will require the claimant to make a judgment on the basis of incomplete information and in relation to witnesses to whom he may not have ready access and will mean that in many cases the alternative claim will resurface at trial compelling the claimant to make a late application to amend with all the obvious difficulties which that will entail. I do not believe that this is what CPR Pt 22 was intended to achieve. Nor do I believe that it is what the statement of truth requires. If the alternative set of facts is clearly pleaded as such then the claimant is not necessarily stating that he believes both sets of facts are true. In the present case if Parts E1(a) and E1(b) are properly expressed as alternatives leading to an allegation of undue influence then what the claimant is affirming is his honest belief that on the basis of either one set of facts or the other Bacon was the subject of undue influence in his dealings with the defendants. It is really a matter of drafting but unless it can be said that one of the alternatives is unsupported by any evidence and is therefore pure speculation or invention on the claimant's part he is entitled in my judgment to sign a statement of truth in these circumstances. I reach this conclusion not without some hesitation and those responsible for reviewing the operation of the Civil Procedure Rules should take the earliest opportunity of reconsidering the provisions of Part 22 in order to provide some proper and clearer guidance in relation to alternative pleas."