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	England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions >> Burke & Anor v Giumba & Anor [2002] EWCA Civ 712 (3 May 2002) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2002/712.html Cite as: [2002] EWCA Civ 712

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IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE CENTRAL LONDON COUNTY COURT
(HIS HONOUR JUDGE COWELL)

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2 Friday, 3rd May 2002

Friday, 3rd May 2002

1. LORD JUSTICE THORPE: When Lord Justice Ward heard Mr Giumba in person on 12th October 2001 he was persuaded to adjourn his application for permission to be heard on notice before a constitution of two with appeal to follow if permission were granted.
2. This hearing today, 3rd May, has been fixed for some considerable time. That much we know from a letter of 28th March written by the RCJ Advice Bureau to Henri Brandman & Co, solicitors for the respondent. The letter incorrectly states that Mr Giumba had obtained permission to appeal. That error aside, it accurately informed the respondents that there was to be a hearing this day, and further useful information was transmitted to them in the shape of a transcript of Ward LJ's brief judgment. In that previous judgment Ward LJ had made it plain that he was adjourning the matter for further investigation because of the applicant's assertion that the payment of the sum of £4,700-odd from an account at Muswell Hill on 1st July 1999 had gone into an account which was, in reality, the account of one of the respondents. That issue had been investigated by the judge who had not been satisfied that the account number to which the payment had gone on 1st July was indeed an account operated by one of the claimants since that claimant, Mr Derbyshire, had produced in evidence a document, which the judge had marked 89C, showing transactions to a Barclay Card account with a different number, and particularly specifying as the first entry on the account the debit in the relevant sum resulting from the dishonour of a cheque. Ward LJ in his concluding remarks said that he would expect Mr Derbyshire as a member of the Bar to produce his goldcard bank statement to accept or deny that he is the account holder of the account to which the 1st July payment had apparently gone.
3. Henri Brandman & Co rightly transmitted to the respondents a copy of Ward LJ's brief judgment. The result was that Mr Derbyshire prepared and signed a supplemental statement on 22nd April in which he explains that the difference in account numbers resulted from Barclays Bank upgrading his status from gold to platinum in June 1999; that upgrade led to the issue of a new number but did not otherwise affect in any way the account, the credits or debits to it, or the resulting balance.
4. This morning Mr Giumba, who has for long been a litigant in person, is represented by Miss Start, who appears pro bono, having been instructed by the RCJ Unit. She complains that the standard of disclosure by Mr Derbyshire in response to the points accepted by Ward LJ is inadequate. Her principal complaint is that the disclosure only of document 89C does not negate the possibility that to that account or some other account operated by Mr Derbyshire at Barclays there was a credit on or about 1st July in the sum of £4,193.81.
5. Mr Warrick, for Mr Derbyshire, has made telling points as to the importance of this court upholding the function of the court of trial, respecting the findings of that court as to credit and reliability and particularly upholding the rule in Ladd v Marshall that litigants in litigants in person should not be permitted in this court to produce and rely on documents which were readily available to them in the course of trial. All those are forceful points. Nonetheless, it seems to me that for the sake of only a few days of adjournment it would be not only fair to the applicant but also fair to Mr Derbyshire to give him the opportunity to produce those few documents which will put this late advanced argument to rest conclusively one way or the other.
6. What we require from Mr Derbyshire are full statements of his Barclay card credit account, whether designated gold or platinum, for the full months of June/July 1999, and at the same time full statements of any current accounts maintained by him with that bank in the same two months. Obviously those accounts can be redacted by Mr Derbyshire to maintain the confidentiality of transactions with others than Mr Giumba. We will make arrangements, although this constitution ends today, somehow or other to reconstitute as we are today hopefully one day next week to deal with this point definitively, conclusively and finally. Any question of costs can be reserved.
(Application adjourned; costs reserved).