White v Brunton: CA 1984

A judgment given upon a trial of a preliminary issue was held to be a final judgment for the purpose of deciding whether leave to appeal was required on the ground that it could be treated as the first part of a final hearing. Sir John Donaldson MR exaplained his conclusion: ‘It is plainly in the interests of the more efficient administration of justice that there should be split trials in appropriate cases, as even where the decision on the first part of a split trial is such that there will have to be a second part, it may be desirable that the decision shall be appealed before incurring the possibly unnecessary expense of the second part. If we were to hold that the division of a final hearing into parts deprived the parties of an unfettered right of appeal, we should be placing an indirect fetter upon the ability of the court to order split trials.’

Judges:

Sir John Donaldson MR

Citations:

[1984] QB 570

Jurisdiction:

England and Wales

Cited by:

CitedHolmes v Bangladesh Binan Corporation 1988
An appeal was sought from a judge’s order deciding a preliminary issue of law. The claimant sought damages under the Fatal Accidents Act case.
Held: Bingham LJ said: ‘Order 33, r. 3 gives the Court a wide discretion to order the separate trial . .
CitedRoerig v Valiant Trawlers Ltd CA 28-Jan-2002
The claimant who was Dutch, was a widow of a fisherman who had died at sea. The question on appeal was ‘in assessing damages for loss of dependency should benefits resulting from the loss be deducted from the damages?’ The claimant’s position under . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Litigation Practice

Updated: 18 May 2022; Ref: scu.449037