The appellant appealed against an order finding her in contempt of court for breach of a court order. The finding had been made in the absence of the parties. She had reported to the police a distorted version of a medical report in the children proceedings.
Held: It had not been necessary to apply for leave in this matter. The order as made could not stand. The court should not in any event have restricted the information available to the Turkish court: ‘If the judge was of the view (which he plainly was) that he was dealing with a litigious couple each of whom was prepared unscrupulously to disclose information for their own ends in the Turkish litigation one would have thought that the more the Turkish court knew about the English proceedings, the better. Indeed, modern good international practice would have called for cooperation and even appropriate discussion between the English and the Turkish judges.’
An injunction must be drafted in terms which are clear, precise and unambiguous. Wall LJ said: ‘if . . the order . . was to have penal consequences, it seems to us that it needed to be clear on its face as to precisely what it meant, and precisely what it forbad both the appellant and the respondent from doing. Contempt will not be established where the breach is of an order which is ambiguous, or which does not require or forbid the performance of a particular act within a specified timeframe. The person or persons affected must know with complete precision what it is that they are required to do or abstain from doing . .’
Judges:
Thorpe LJ, Wall LJ
Citations:
[2010] EWCA Civ 21, [2010] 1 FLR 1478
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – D v D (Access: Contempt: Committal) CA 9-Nov-1990
An order granting custody did not require a person to or abstain from a particular act, and could not therefore be the source of a comittal for contempt of it.
Orse ; Dempster v Dempster . .
Cited – Harris v Harris; Harris v Attorney General FD 21-May-2001
The applicant had been committed for ten months for contempt, being in breach of family court injunctions. He applied to be released after two months on the basis that the unserved balance of the sentence be suspended. The court held that it had the . .
Cited – Nicholls v Nicholls CA 20-Dec-1996
The formalities of committal proceedings are to be strictly observed, but a breach of the formalities may be overlooked if it does not affect the justice of the case.
Lord Woolf MR considered the discretion given to a court to commit for . .
Cited – In Re B (A Minor) (Contempt Evidence); Re B (Contempt of Court: affidavit: evidence) FD 15-Nov-1995
Respondents in contempt proceedings to file affidavit evidence to prepare case. . .
Cited – Re B ( A Minor)(Contempt: Evidence) FD 6-Dec-1995
The lack of an obligation on an alleged contemnor to testify did not mean that he could avoid providing an affidavit. . .
Cited by:
Cited – Jones, Re (Alleged Contempt of Court) FD 21-Aug-2013
The Solicitor General sought the committal of the respondent for alleged contempt of court. There had been repeated litigation between the respondent and her former husband as to whether the children should live in Spain with the father or in Wales . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Contempt of Court
Updated: 13 August 2022; Ref: scu.396376