Can You Defend Legal Proceedings From Prison?

The matter Can You Defend Legal Proceedings From Prison? and whilst detained at His Majesty’s pleasure was considered in the judgment of Wright & Ors v Chappell & Ors [2023] EWHC 2873 (Ch).

At an earlier hearing according to Deputy ICC Judge Schaffer you can engage in legal proceedings whilst detained at His Majesty’s pleasure:

…people who are in prison can still have access to their lawyers, can still give instructions, can still look at the documents, as can their lawyers, so there is no reason why points of defence cannot be prepared and served.

However, it appears it was suggested that one needs to get one’s act together. 

This is the case involving BHS Group Limited which is in creditors voluntary liquidation (and other companies). An application was issued by the first respondent Dominic Chappell for an adjournment to a trial after it had begun when he had just been released from prison.

Effect Of Prison On Defending Legal Proceedings

A point raised by Mr Chappell about the effect of his incarceration was:

Given that there are 2 million documents and 24 boxes of documents and it has taken a firm such as yours 5 years to prepare, how does your firm expect me with only pen and paper to prepare. The simple matter is if I were to review each document at one minute per page it would take me 41,600 hours to review the disclosure further as such time has passed I will need to review everything. To this end I will FORMALLY REQUEST THAT DEFENCE WILL BE AS MY OTHER THREE DEFENDANTS AND THE COURT TO AGREE THIS.”

The judge highlighted that Joseph Curl KC (acting for the Liquidators) said that the requests of Mr Chappell were “unappeasable”:

….He submitted that Mr Chappell was demanding an index to 2 million documents and 42 boxes and disclosure of all of the documents in hard copy. By letter dated 6 December 2021 Jones Day wrote to Mr Chappell stating that they had sent him hard copy bundles for the relevant hearing and of the Joint Liquidators’ disclosure. They also stated that it was unnecessary for him to have access to disclosure to prepare Points of Defence….

It seems Mr Chappell was not on all fours here on the point about access to disclosure material:

By letter dated 27 May 2022 Mr Chappell wrote directly to Jones Day. He stated that he had not consented to the order dated 28 April 2022 and he insisted that all disclosure was delivered to him in hard copy and that if this was done, he would have no alternative but to apply to Court for an order to that effect. He also stated: “I will need to go through each and every document and this will take, say, 1 min per document: 33,000 + hours.” Finally, he also stated that if he had not received the documents by 4 June 2022, he would have no option but to apply for an adjournment for a further 12 months.

However, Mr Curl noted an issue with timescales:

Mr Curl submitted that Mr Chappell was trying to engineer a situation in which the Court would accept that he was unable to participate in this action and to conclude that this was unfair. He pointed out that if Mr Chappell spent 33,000 hours reviewing the documents it would have taken him approximately a decade…

The judge here concluded it was not possible for Mr Chappell to defend the proceedings from prison:

Mr Curl described Mr Chappell’s conduct as studied or tactical helplessness and submitted that I should refuse an adjournment for this reason. But I am not satisfied that Mr Chappell was being tactical with the aim of derailing the trial (as the Court of Appeal found in Ablyazov (No 9). In my judgment, it was practically impossible for him to defend these proceedings whilst in prison.

However, notwithstanding that the judge here said he accepted there is no principle that a party in prison is entitled to adjournment of civil proceedings because of the inconvenience that being resident at His Majesty’s Pleasure causes. As a result, he said only a short adjournment would be available to help Mr Chappell get up to speed on matters.

In this matter, due to other factors, the claims were severed with Mr Chappell’s application granted.

The judgment is not a particularly lengthy decision and worthy of a full read of the issues fleshed out that extended to a range of notable points ranging from the effect of medical considerations, the rules for granting an adjournment and the question of severing the proceedings that it seems the judge had to grapple with.