Ellis and five others sued on behalf of themselves and all other growers of fruit, flowers, vegetables, roots or herbs to enforce rights conferred on them by the Covent Garden Act 1828 against the Duke of Bedford as the owner of the market. The Duke of Bedford obtained as strike out. The Court discharged that order on the undertaking of the plaintiffs to join the Attorney-General as a defendant. The Duke’s appeal was dismissed. The Courts interpret the rules ‘for the sake of convenience’ and ‘in accordance with common sense’ in order to ‘come at justice’
Lord Macnaghten discussed whether the rule only applied to claims to some beneficial right of property and said ‘But it seems to me that there is no reason whatever for so restricting the rule, which was only meant to apply the practice of the Court of Chancery to all divisions of the High Court. The old rule in the Court of Chancery was very simple and perfectly well understood. Under the old practice the Court required the presence of all parties interested in the matter in suit, in order that a final end might be made of the controversy. But when the parties were so numerous that you could never ‘come at justice’, to use an expression in one of the older cases, if everybody interested was made a party, the rule was not allowed to stand in the way. It was originally a rule of convenience: for the sake of convenience it was relaxed. Given a common interest and a common grievance, a representative suit was in order if the relief sought was in its nature beneficial to all whom the plaintiff proposed to represent. To limit the rule to persons having a beneficial proprietary interest would be opposed to precedent, and not, I think, in accordance with common sense.’
The ‘old’ rule in the Court of Chancery was very simple and perfectly well understood and provided that if a common interest and a common grievance existed, a representative suit was in order if the relief sought was in its nature beneficial to all whom the plaintiff proposed to represent. This was irrespective as to whether the represented persons were residents.
Lord MacNaghten
[1901] AC 1, [1900] UKLawRpAC 56, [1900-3] All ER 694
Commonlii
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – John v Rees and Others; Martin and Another v Davis and Others ChD 1969
The Court was asked as to the validity of proceedings at a meeting of the members of the local Labour Party which had broken up in disorder. The proceedings were instituted by the leader of one faction on behalf of himself and all other members of . .
Cited – Aberconway v Whetnall 1918
Lord Aberconway and others sought to recover for themselves and all other subscribers to a fund for the benefit of the defendant the amounts they had collectively subscribed on the grounds that they were induced to do so by misrepresentation.
Cited – CBS Songs Ltd v Amstrad Consumer Electronics Plc CA 1987
Persons other than the Attorney General do not have standing to enforce, through a civil court, the observance of the criminal law as such. However, Sir Denys Buckley considered that such a claim might be maintained as a representative action . .
Cited – Emerald Supplies Ltd and Another v British Airways Plc ChD 8-Apr-2009
The claim was for damages after alleged price fixing by the defendants. The claimants sought to recover for themselves and as representatives of others who had similarly suffered. The defendants sought that the representative element of the claim be . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Litigation Practice, Intellectual Property
Updated: 15 December 2021; Ref: scu.179753