A 140-day fight for a judgment

A reserved judgment, e-mailed in secret to the parties, was only disclosed to the mouseinthecourt some 140 days after being handed down.

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Part of a series looking at Secret Courts

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Frazer Fearnhead is an interesting chap. He was told he had the “most ridiculous valuation ever” when he pitched a company called House Crowd on BBC’s Dragons Den.

The company has since entered administration, and in June 2022 he made an application to sue his former company The House Crowd.

Here’s how the hearing appeared in the list (Note: the e-mail address manchestercivil@….)

So I duly attended via remote means. The Judge indicated he would reserve judgment.

A few weeks later I e-mailed the court:

I’m told three weeks later:

So the wrong e-mail was on the cause list. And I note that the CE-File entry for this case doesn’t exist. Unprompted I receive another e-mail the following week.

Ok, so I continue to keep an eye out on the cause list. PD 40E, as mentioned by the judge, requires judgment hand downs to be listed. I make this point 13 weeks later.

No response is received. I try the judicial press office a month later.

10-days later I chase.

I receive a response – they will contact the judge.

The judge directs that I should be sent a copy of the judgment.

And here we are. 140 days after the judgment was handed down. No explanation as to why it has taken so long.

And it still hasn’t appeared on the list as per Practice Direction 40E

1.1 This Practice Direction applies to all reserved judgments which the court intends to hand down in writing.
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2.9 The case will be listed for judgment

So why does this matter?

It’s wasteful of my time, the courts time, the judges time & press office time. There is a chilling effect on the coverage of these kind of cases if you can’t report the decision contemporaneously.

As the cause list (and every single authority touching on open justice) states “Open justice is a fundamental principle in our courts and tribunals system“. We shouldn’t have secret courts handing down secret decisions.

Behind this fully FCA regulated company are 3,100 members of the public who had crowdfunded £52.7m towards property loans. There is a public interest in the affairs of the company and how the directors acted in the run up to the administration.

[Source Para 37 of First Witness Statement of Franklyn Ofonagoro deployed in CR-2021-MAN-000111 & ors]