| HOUSE OF LORDS — Practice — Disclosure of draft speeches — Practice of disclosing draft speeches to counsel prior to delivery of judgment —Purpose of disclosure to correct misprints, errors of fact of ambiguities — Attempt to reargue case abuse of procedure
R (Edwards) v Environment Agency; [2008] WLR (D) 119
HL: Lord Hoffmann, Lord Hope of Craighead, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood and Lord Mance: 16 April 2008
When copies of draft speeches which the Law Lords proposed to deliver were provided in confidence, prior to the delivery of judgment, to the legal representatives of the parties to an appeal which had been heard, the purpose was to obtain help in correcting misprints, inadvertent errors of fact or ambiguities of expression. It was not intended to enable the case to be reargued, and any attempt to do so amounted to an abuse of the procedure of the House of Lords.
The House of Lords so stated when unanimously dismissing the appeal of the claimants, David Edwards and Lilian Palikaropoulos, from a decision of the Court of Appeal (Auld, Rix and Maurice Kay LJJ) on 27 June 2006 to uphold the dismissal by Lindsay J on 19 April 2005 of a claim for judicial review of a decision of the first defendant, the Environment Agency, dated 12 August 2003, to permit the interested party, Rugby Cement Ltd, to trial burn waste tyres at its plant in Rugby. The Secretary of State for the Communities and Local Government and the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs were joined as second and third defendants respectively.
LORD HOFFMANN said that the hearing of the appeal had concluded on 23 January 2008. On 4 April, after the members of the Appellate Committee had prepared drafts of the speeches which they proposed to deliver, the solicitors to the parties had been notified that judgment would be given on 9 April. In accordance with the practice of the House of Lords, copies of the draft speeches had been provided in confidence with a request that counsel check them for “error and ambiguity”. On 7 April the claimants’ solicitors had notified the Judicial Office that they proposed to submit a memorandum pointing out errors in the judgment but that it could not be submitted until the following morning. Judgment had therefore had to be postponed until 16 April. The memorandum when it arrived had consisted of 27 paragraphs of closely typed submissions referring to three Directives which had not been mentioned in the claimants’ lengthy submissions to their Lordships and repeating other arguments which had already been considered. It had contained nothing which had caused his Lordship to wish to change the views expressed in his draft judgment. In his Lordship’s opinion the submission of such a memorandum was an abuse of the procedure of the House of Lords. The purpose of the disclosure of the draft speeches to counsel was to obtain their help in correcting errors of fact or ambiguities of expression. It was not to enable them to reargue the case.
|
Appearances: David Wolfe and Tessa Hetherington (Richard Buxton, Cambridge) for the claimants; David Elvin QC and Kassie Smith (Solicitor, Environment Agency) for the first defendant; Kassie Smith (Treasury Solicitor) for the second and third defendants; Stephen Tromans and Colin Thomann (UK Legal Cemex, Egham) for the interested party.
|
