Right to a Fair Trial

Habib Bank Ltd v Abbeypearl Ltd [2001] All ER(D) 185

The claimant issued proceedings in November 1991 and directions for trial were given in 1993. The claimant failed to follow any of these directions or further directions made in 1995. The claimant “did nothing to carry this action forward. No list of documents. No accountants’ report. No witness statements. Nothing. In August 1999 the defendants” application to strike the case out was successful. The Court of Appeal dismissed the defendants’ appeal commenting that the application “was doomed to failure from the outset”. This was a very strong example of a case which could not be ‘justly disposed of’. The events giving rise to the claim went back to the late 1980s, the case could not be resolved on the documents alone (possible fraud rendering the documentation unreliable) and the case was far from ready for trial, despite the time it had already occupied. A court would be entitled to feel that it was not in a position to do justice between the parties on such limited and stale material. Article 6.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights did not assist the claimant as it was accepted by both sides that the relevant issue on the appeal was whether the judge was clearly wrong when he decided that a fair trial was no longer possible, which was the relevant test in the circumstances of the case, which was the relevant test under both the CPR and article 6.1.