The tenant had a bad record of payment of rent. The local authority sought possession. The district judge suspended the possession warrant. The authority appealed to the county court judge on the basis that the district judge had made his order without seeing the court file which in turn showed the many attempts by the authority to secure payment. The county court judge reheard the case and allowed the authority’s appeal. The tenant appealed saying that the county court judge should not have reheard the case.
Held: A rehearing should only have been allowed where an injustice had been shown. It was a requirement of the rule that the judge had to consider it to be in the interests of justice to allow a rehearing. No injustice had been shown in the way the district judge had handled the case.
A failure to put a case is not a reason to order a re-hearing. Ward LJ said: ‘It is, in the end, very difficult to see precisely what injustice the judge did find had occurred or what interests of justice actually required this re-hearing. It is, after all, to be firmly accepted that a re-hearing is an exception to the general rule; that some injustice must have occurred, and a simple failure to put one’s case before the first court is not ordinarily to be cured by a re-hearing.’
Judges:
Ward LJ, Arden LJ
Citations:
[2005] EWCA Civ 1798, Times 14-Dec-2005
Links:
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – McKeown v British Horseracing Authority QBD 12-Mar-2010
The jockey claimant challenged disciplinary proceedings brought against him by the defendant authority.
Held: The findings were upheld in part but remitted for consideration of giving the claimant opportunity to challenge certain evidence. . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Civil Procedure Rules, Housing, Housing, Litigation Practice
Updated: 04 July 2022; Ref: scu.237549