Attorney-General v Covey: QBD 6 Oct 2000

In an application for a vexatious litigant order, the court asked whether the repetitious proceedings must be against the same defendant. Lord Justice Rose: ‘The question is whether it is a necessary prerequisite for the making of an order under section 42 that the repetitious behaviour of which complaint is made has necessarily either to be directed against the same defendant or to arise from the same subject matter.
In my judgment, that is not the position. Granted that repetitious conduct is a necessary prerequisite for the making of an order, what gives rise to that repetitiveness necessarily depends, it seems to me, on the circumstances of the particular case. In making the determination whether or not there is that necessary element of repetition one looks at the whole history of the defendant’s litigious activity. In some cases that activity will focus upon a particular defendant. In some cases it will focus upon a particular grievance. In some cases it may be represented by numerous claims against a wide range of defendants in circumstances where no reasonable cause of action exists. In this last category of case, it seems to me, the conditions of section 42 may be fulfilled just as they may be if a particular defendant or a particular grievance is the focus of the defendant’s activity. As the passages in the judgment in Vernazza to which I earlier referred, make plain, one has to look at the whole of the circumstances, the way in which the proceedings were instituted, whether with or without reasonable cause, and also the way in which subsequently they were conducted by way of hopeless appeal or otherwise. All of those matters have to be considered.’

Judges:

Lord Justice Rose

Citations:

Unreported, 6 October 2000

Statutes:

Supreme Court Act 1981 42(1)

Jurisdiction:

England and Wales

Cited by:

Appeal fromAttorney-General v Covey; Attorney-General v Matthews CA 19-Feb-2001
Appeals were made against orders under s42 of the 1981 Act restraining the appellants from commencing proceedings without consent of the court.
Held: The non-disclosure of a bench memorandum was the usual practice internationally, and not a . .
CitedAttorney General v Perotti Admn 10-May-2006
The respondent had been subject first to a Grepe v Loam order and then to an extended civil restraint order. The court had still faced many hopeless applications. An order was now sought that any future application for permission to appeal be heard . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Administrative, Human Rights

Updated: 12 April 2022; Ref: scu.241644