civil case – Legal Babble

August 3, 2021August 3, 2021

CPS Caught Out Lying. Again!

There’s few more enjoyable things in life than catching out a liar.

Senior CPS official and CPS Civil Legal caught out lying to the court and the public.

And with such as The Crown Prosecution Service you won’t have to wait long to do this. In the same way as Boris Johnson is capable of three lies before breakfast the CPS loves to try to mislead to cover up the incompetent and vindictive behaviour of its staff.

It’s all about maintaining a sense of professional reputation of course. This is the aim above all else. It comes below proving a professional, effective and efficient service and it leads CPS to try to bend the truth when they’ve been caught out. As happens here.

The joy of this is that they’ve been caught out twice over basically the same thing.

Here’s how this took place.

In a case in which I was involved at The High Court sitting at Leeds the CPS provided data for the Court and a copy was sent to me. The data supplied was factually inaccurate and highly damaging. CPS knew that the data was factually wrong but went ahead anyway on the basis that it would provide them with a tactical advantage in proceedings.

The data was supplied by a Tracy Wareham of CPS Yorkshire and Humberside. Oddly the wife of Gerry Wareham, the head of that division. If her relationship status has anything to do with her continued employment or not given the things she gets up to I couldn’t say.

Wareham supplied a copy of this data to me in advance of the hearing & was warned some weeks prior that the data was factually wrong, damaging, libellous and in need of urgent correction. She failed to make any effort to correct this in advance of the hearing or to research why the data was wrong in response to my emails.

Her actions amount to a breach of GDPR and The Data Protection Act.

The wrong data supplied was sufficiently damaging and serious to cause significant loss to me. The lie put before the Court was of epic proportions.

Nor was this a consequence-free lie. CPS misled the Court in order to gain tactical material advantage.

CPS Civil Legal dept. created an arguably bigger mistake when they tried to cover this up a few weeks later. In an email to me they claimed that the error was corrected pre-hearing and that this limited the damage caused.

This is of course another lie!

Copies of the emails between Wareham and the Court were supplied to me by Leeds Combined Court and show that no such efforts to correct the data in time were made.

Therefore CPS Civil Legal Services have lied to try to cover up the actions of a senior employee who breached GDPR and The Data Protection Act to try to gain material advantage within a civil hearing by misleading the Court.

Seen below is the email to CPS Civil Legal Dept. exposing their lie. Slight edits made to some lines of text to remove personal details.

Don’t assume that The Crown Prosecution Service is out to tell the truth, be open or is even competent enough to get the basics right. If the opportunity’s there to gain advantage in any situation staff will behave mendaciously and allow their internal departments to try cover up for their behaviour. In this instance both the original person and the department have been significantly caught out. The court has been invited to take action in relation to the supply of a misleading statement in proceedings and The Information Commissioner’s Office has been informed.

February 12, 2021September 19, 2021

What is a Dismissal List Manager responsible For? Substandard Case Administration?

Was going to write a length diatribe on how badly served we are by Civil Appeals Office at The Royal Courts of Justice but a short explanation, a couple of screenshots and a reproduced email do the job just as well.

This is a blog entry about how a civil appeal matter has received suboptimal service by HMCTS staff, how it’s taken some five months to identify claimed issues with documents supposedly not being sent, but in fact these documents were supplied. How is this related to the shady post of Dismissal List Manager which HMCTS dislike revealing the details of?

To start with here are the screenshots. I’ve been waiting for a response from Civil Appeals Office on this matter since November 2020, their last communication to me prior to this taking some two months to be sent.

Joseph Goswell states his position is in the Case Management Section at Civil Appeals office. He writes:

What is stated to be wrong with the application…

Rather a tight time limit for a letter sent to an Applicant on 11.2.21!

In actual fact none of the stated errors with the application exist. All the documents required in the matter were supplied in September 2020. See the reproduced email below.

One thing Joseph Goswell doesn’t tend to advertise is his other job at HMCTS – Dismissal List Manager. This is certainly not the post he mentions in the above letter.

It is noted that HMCTS are very shifty and refuse to answer reasonable data access requests for what a Dismissal List Manager actually does. For more on this bizarre refusal to address a perfectly legitimate question see the link below:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/duties_of_dismissal_list_manager

Ludicrously it is claimed no data exists on the role and the responses given to the data access request above are so vague as to be meaningless. In a position paid for out of the public purse why such coyness unless there’s a vested interest in keeping the data secret.

However we can theorise that this role may be someone within HMCTS whose purpose is to frustrate claims at an administrative level for the purpose of enabling them to be dismissed. This seems to tally with the letter content written above in which non-existent issues are identified with a bundle. Of course if HMCTS would like to explain what this role actually is then I’d be happy to include the data here.

My email in response to the letter from Civil Appeals Office states:

I refer to your email below.

I note the delay in response to any issue arising out of this matter and that there has been no communication from your office since November last year. I note that the email prior to that took some two months to receive a response.

The core bundle was filed and served on 2.9.20. Since that point CA have not identified any issue with the bundle which would make it non-compliant.

You state that there is no index. A copy of the index was supplied (index.doc). This shows the reference number for each of the following documents which corresponds to the number starting each document. As was a copy of the sealed order being appealed against (4). The Judicial Review claim form is at (12) and the grounds for JR both follow on from this. In other words all of the grounds you give for the bundle being in error are in fact present and correct and have been with your office since September 2020.

I note further that there has been no communication from CA since September 2020 in relation to the bundle supplied. We are now some five months gone from September 2020. Perhaps you could explain why this is so if there are thought to be errors? For your convenience I have attached a copy of all correspondence so far with CA office.

To go from September 2020 to February 2021 without identifying errors in a bundle and reverting to the Claimant five months later and only at the point at which the Claimant chases the matter up represents an unacceptable service level failure for which I now make a formal complaint to The Court Manager. The errors you state exist with the bundle are not present, as I have shown.

It is further poor service that the attached letter of 11.2.21 states you require these errors correcting by 18.2.21 when you have been sat on these issues for so long. However as stated above each of the documents you claim not to be present is in fact present within the bundle.

A further copy of the bundle is attached to this email.

Please inform me of the progress of this matter, and the progress of the complaint alongside the name of the Court Manager to whom the matter has been referred.

Email of 12.2.21 ends.

So there are the following issues arising here:

Let’s assume there WERE errors in the bundle supplied to The Court of Appeal… why does it take five months for these to be identified?
More to the point why wait until an Applicant emails the court five months later before informing of these?
..and then give a total of seven days in a pandemic (five if we discount the weekend) for these to be corrected when these matters have been left to lay on file for five months now?
Admin staff can see that all of the documents they claim were not supplied were in fact attached with the original bundle. So why do they claim they were not?
Why has there been no communication on this claim for some three months?
Why is there seemingly no data on the post of Dismissal List Manager which can be made public?
Why does Joseph Goswell not use his correct title in the letter to me of 11.2.21?

Suspect the answer to the above questions can be found in the shady and little-stated other position of Joseph Goswell as “Dismissal List Manager”!

Is the handling of this matter standard HMCTS incompetence or is the role of Dismissal List Manager a shadier one than we can imagine and one in which civil claims are subject to interdiction and mishandling to frustrate them?

As always anyone or any organisation cited in this blog post has a right to corrections which I will be happy to make on receipt of relevant evidence.

UPDATE TO THE ABOVE: 19.9.21.

I have today been contacted by email by another person who has had a very similar experience with the same people in the same department as I have.

The experience relayed by this person is interesting. Goswell’s position as “Dismissal List Manager” suggests a specific purpose: does HMCTS have a policy of purposefully frustrating and delaying certain types of claim which might prove embarrassing or politically sensitive to the organisation? More data needed but at least three persons to my knowledge have had experiences which suggest so.

November 21, 2020November 25, 2020

The Soaring Ascendant

Yesterday one of my cases was assessed and received judgment from Mr. Justice Warby, who just last week delivered an initial appraisal of the Coleen Rooney v. Rebekah Vardy case which is presently before him.

More on that matter and the outcome of the initial hearing in Rooney v. Vardy can be seen in the official judgment published at https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Vardy-v-Rooney-judgment.pdf

Sir Mark David John **Warby**, styled The Hon. Mr **Justice** **Warby**

As one might expect based on his reputation the judgement in my claim was incisive, carefully worded and hit all the correct notes.

It makes something of a change to deal with a judge who is focused on the best and most natural route for a case in line with the Overriding Objectives as opposed to the way some more local judiciary handle cases!

In March 2017 Mr. Justice Warby was appointed Judge in Charge of the Media and Communications List and is to be appointed to The Court of Appeal from 2021.

November 19, 2020November 20, 2020

Another Fine Mess… from Leeds Combined Court

A superb example of how the civil courts in the UK operate.

Laurel & Hardy-ish levels of incompetence from staff at Leeds Combined Court.

A hearing was set for last week and the appropriate Notice of Hearing was sent out for that case.

However what the merry pranksters at civil section failed to point out was that there were two other pending civil cases to be heard by the same High Court Judge at the same hearing on the same day.

No Notice of Hearing document was sent out in relation to these other two cases. Equally no Order in relation to them was made ahead of the hearing. In short no notification of these two other claims being in play that day at all.

Therefore there could be no case preparation for these other two claims as I was blithely unaware that these were due to go ahead in the same hearing as a claim that I was notified about.

This is pretty much par for the course with HMCTS these days: an organisation in which the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

The consequence of this overall for court users is delay, confusion and ultimately injustice.

The consequence for your poor bloody correspondent is of course more time, effort and expense spent correcting the errors made by court staff.

Twist ending to the tale: an application in respect of this matter was sent to the court just a few moments ago with an inquiry as to what the fee would be to file this. The answer was returned almost immediately.

However a complaint about the poor standard of service in the failure to notify me of two cases to be heard hasn’t been answered at all.

Conclusion: HMCTS is more interested in taking your money to correct service level errors they’ve made than they are in responding to legitimate and justified complaints.

November 10, 2020November 11, 2020

Anatomy of Child Protection Failures in Doncaster.

In Doncaster in early January 2020 a child died. His name was Keigan O’Brien.

Doncaster overall has an appalling reputation as a place in which children can grow up safely and free from fear of harm. Several incidents in recent years have put the city’s child protection measures into the national spotlight. At one point the relevant responsibilities would have rested with the local authority.

However Doncaster Children’s Services Trust (DCST) is an offshoot organisation set up by Doncaster Council. This follows a series of disastrous child protection failures from Doncaster Council (itself a noticeably underperforming local authority) and the establishment of DCST was clearly to place some element of distance between the Council and child protection services in the city. A useful tactic for the senior organisation avoiding blame and bad publicity. But the service provided by DCST is still the same appallingly poor standard as when matters were under the Council’s jurisdiction.

Tellingly the most recent OFSTED reports that DSCT show on their own site end in 2018.

The head of DCST is Jim Foy, the improbably titled LADO or Local Authority Designated Officer. The title is of course a hangover from the days when the service was an in-house Council run operation.

On the occasions this correspondent has encountered him Jim Foy seems a man hopelessly disengaged with the job he has to do and the overall impression is of a man who is the cause of chaos in his employment which others run then around correcting. This is bad enough in any post but in one with the responsibilities of LADO the consequences of failure are catastrophic to service users, their families and the local community.

And so it proved when Jim Foy – in the course of his duties – recorded data on a person who had engaged in a new relationship with a clerical support worker in a Doncaster area school. Not only did he record the data wrongly but he also recorded a matter which was not an offence in British criminal law. He failed to spot either of these errors. He then used this incorrect data to confront the clerical support worker and used it to try to force her out of her employment.
When later faced with clear evidence that he had recorded the data incorrectly Jim Foy refused to amend or correct the error. Instead only after matters were investigated by the UK’s data regulator, The Information Commissioner’s Office, which found against DCST was the data reluctantly corrected.

The DPA 1998 states at 10(1) that a data controller is required to cease processing of personal data on ground that process of that data likely to cause damage / distress and is unwarranted.

Principal 4 also states that data held on an individual should be both accurate and kept up to date.

The error caused by DCST is twofold then: the recording of incorrect data in the first instance and the failure to correct it in the second. It is assumed that Jim Foy is sufficiently aware of these regulations and how they impact on his responsibilities although the persistent failure to correct the error when notified suggests otherwise.

In a civil case at Doncaster Civil Justice Centre North this week the defence of DCST to the claim of breach of the relevant legislation was not accepted by the judge who saw through the (admittedly very weak) set of arguments defence barrister presented.

The wider issue in this matter is that if DCST is recording data on people wrongly then how can they hope to build a genuine picture of the potential threats to children in their area? The consistent failure of DCST to protect children in the Doncaster region is evidence of where these kinds of systemic failure leads.

There is a cost to the public purse of this. So far there have been five hearings in this claim settled this week at a figure of around £1,000.00 costs to DCST each time they have sent counsel and instructed solicitor. Conservative estimates therefore put the costs to then local taxpayer of defence of a matter which was doomed to fail in any event (including pre-trial preparation etc) at around £9,000.00. This is over the matter of a simple piece of data recorded wrongly from one telephone call.

Nor is this the worst part of this matter.

In a December 2019 hearing and – presumably desperate to gain some form of hold on the Claimant and tactical advantage in the case via obtaining information on him – Jim Foy overheard a conversation at court in the case which resulted in him making enquiries regarding the Claimant’s children which by any examination breach the Claimant’s Article 8 right to privacy. These enquiries were made not only to the databases that DCST would use as a matter of course but also to local police forces.

Jim Foy was running around gathering this data with questionable legality and no operational remit to do so at the same time Keigan O’Brien was being placed in peril by the actions of his parents.

Also at the same time Jim Foy was giving training sessions (https://buy.doncaster.gov.uk/Event/102055) on safeguarding children in the local area.

All this of course could only happen in DCST where actual child protection concerns come second to maintaining underperforming staff in post and ensuring the continuation of the organisation.

November 8, 2020November 8, 2020

A Cautionary Tale of Judges and Twitter. Part One.

Judge Sarah Greenan (or HHJ Sarah Greenan) sits as a judge in the Family Court at Leeds Combined Court and also as a Crown Court Judge in Manchester. Her old chambers are Zenith in Leeds.

For most of her time sat on the bench she appears both bored and irritated by the mechanics of the job she has to do.

Specific rules exist in relation to judges and their ability to express an opinion in a public forum as well as their use of social media. These are enshrined in the Judicial Conduct Rules.

In February 2019 Judge Greenan posted a tweet to her since deleted Twitter account @Sarah_Zenith which expressed satisfaction that a High Court Judge has upheld an appeal in relation to a judgement she made and also that the Court of Appeal upheld her in a different case.

You may of course be wondering at this point why this judge has so many of her cases sent to appeal. This isn’t for me to comment but doubtless you can draw your own conclusions. Her pastoral supervisor is Judge Mark Gosnell, the senior civil judge for Leeds and Bradford, who also sits at Leeds.

However the sending of such a tweet amounted to a breach of regulations governing judicial conduct.

In cases such as this (or for example if a judge is abusive or aggressive in a hearing) there is a body to which complaints can be made. This is the reliably ineffective Judicial Conduct and Investigations Office based at The Royal Courts of Justice in London. Despite its name this is an office which actively seeks to avoid any examination into judicial misconduct and will seek to disapply – that is to say reject – complaints for a number of spurious reasons. Britain’s public life is beset with watchdogs which have no bite: it enables a “business as usual” approach to the corruption and incompetence which characterise public life in the UK.

But to everyone’s surprise this matter was taken up by JCIO. Which was one of a handful of complaints they did choose to investigate in 2019 and not “cuff off” as is standard procedure. Perhaps because this is a relatively low-level offence for which the evidence of misconduct was clear and unarguable. Or perhaps JCIO had a quota of complaints to process in 2019 to make it look as if the office was actually doing their job and this was seen as a trouble-free investigation. The matter was examined by the reliably obstreperous Isabelle Odowa at JCIO.

In short not even JCIO could not find a way to dismiss the complaint!

The basis of the complaint was that a lack of impartiality was shown in the opinions expressed, that personal opinions were shown and that the relevant codes of conduct for judges making public comments were breached.

As per standard procedure the complaint was referred to a Nominated Judge and then onwards to The Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor. Each made a finding against HHJ Sarah Greenan with the ultimate conclusion being that the complaint was upheld.

The sanction imposed was informal advice in accordance with Para. 15 (2) & (3) of the Judicial Discipline (Prescribed Procedures) Regulations 2014.

This “cosy chat” approach of providing informal advice doesn’t seem like much of a sanction. And it isn’t. Because as this and several other cases referred to JCIO and upheld by The Lord Chancellor show “light touch” regulation is very much favoured particularly when it comes to misconduct from judges.

However it can be noted that judges as far south as Central London County Court were aware of and discussing this case after The Lord Chancellor’s decision and as such it may have sharpened up the behaviour of some of the judiciary on social media. Or not in the case of such as HHJ Recorder Ben Nolan QC… whose case I shall go into in a separate blog post one day.

This whole matter has made it clear to Judicial Office however that HHJ Greenan isn’t someone who can be relied upon not to make inadvisable comments in public forums. The judiciary tends not to appreciate members who are too verbose in this was & her actions may cost her a promotion or a minor title on retirement somewhere down the line.