THE COURTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES
A look at small claims
Opening remarks: to express thanks for this invitation to speak, etc, etc
In February Judge Monhoz wrote to the International Office of the Judicial Secretariat about this National Forum of your Small Claims Courts and to request the attendance of a Judge to give a talk about small claims in our country.
Usually, when the International Office receives a request for a Judge to speak at an important and prestigious meeting such as this one, the first thought is to consider a very high ranking Judge, a Judge from our Supreme Court, our Court of Appeal or our High Court. Although I have no doubt that such a high ranking Judge would have been delighted to visit your beautiful country, they would have had some difficulty giving a talk about small claims. They have no experience of small claims cases.
Their lack of experience is my good fortune, as the invitation was referred to me, a District Judge with 27 years experience as a Judge of small claims hearings, and here I am and here is my talk.
SLIDE 1
The title of my talk was chosen by someone else. Judge Munhoz asked me for a title, but I was too slow in replying. The programme was printed and someone else gave a title to my talk. I would like to thank and to congratulate that person who did, because I could not have given a better title myself. I suspect that the title was chosen by someone with knowledge of our legal system, as it is entirely accurate.
The Courts of England and Wales
The United Kingdom is made up of 4 countries, England, Scotland (who almost voted in a referendum last year to leave the United Kingdom to become an independent country), Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland and Northern Ireland each has their own separate and distinct legal system and their own judiciary. England and Wales have the one shared legal system and judiciary.
A look at small claims
The author of the title was correct in not referring to a “Small Claims Court” because there is no such thing in our country. The Court with jurisdiction to hear small claims is the County Court. The County Court has jurisdiction in civil and family cases and small claims is one of the categories of claims that the County Court deals with. I am now going to introduce you to a Judge of the County Court.
SLIDE 2
That Judge is me. I hope you will be able to see which one of the two judges shown is me. I am on the left with the blue bands, which denote a District Judge. On the right is Mr Justice Singh with the red bands which denote a High Court Judge. This photograph was taken at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand in London and the occasion was my “swearing in” as a District Judge. Our full title is Her Majesty’s District Judge. We are appointed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and at home I have the warrant of my appointment signed personally by Her Majesty. However, before we can begin our work as District Judges we have to swear two oaths at a formal ceremony. One is the Oath of Allegiance to the Queen and the other is the Judicial Oath and by the Judicial Oath we promise to “do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this realm, without fear or favour, affection or ill will”. These oaths are taken in public in open Court and are received by a senior Judge, in my case Mr Justice Singh. Family and friends of the Judge being sworn in attend, as can any member of the public, and there is a reception with refreshments afterwards.
It will not surprise you that the Queen does not personally choose her District Judges. Experienced practising lawyers apply to a Judicial Appointments Commission, whose Commissioners are drawn from the judiciary, the legal profession and members of the public. The Commission holds “Selection Exercises” or competitions. Practising lawyers who are successful are first appointed as “Deputy District Judges” who are part-time Judges who undertake between 20 and 50 sittings a year, whilst they continue with their practice as lawyers. After a number of years as a Deputy, the Deputy can enter a selection exercise to be appointed a District Judge and if he succeeds, the Commission recommends him or her to Her Majesty for appointment. Once appointed and sworn in, the District Judge cannot continue to practice as a lawyer, and indeed cannot be engaged in any other paid employment at all.
This process means that it is very rare indeed for someone to be appointed a District Judge at a younger age than their mid-forties. This is in contrast to the Judiciary in some European countries, such as France, where a judicial career is quite separate and distinct from a career as a lawyer. In France you attend a college for judges and can be appointed as a Judge in your mid-twenties.
Now I am going to introduce you to the County Court. There is just the one County Court for England and Wales but this Court has court buildings in cities and towns all over the country. Even quite small towns can have a County Court centre, though in recent years there have been a number of closures of the smaller court centres with cases going to nearby larger towns and cities. I am based at the County Court sitting at Peterborough, a city 75 miles due north of London with a population of just under 200,000.
SLIDE 3
This is not the County Court, but I thought you would like to see a photograph of Peterborough Cathedral, in the city centre.
SLIDE 4
This is the County Court, which is just a short walk away from the Cathedral.
SLIDE 5
Here I am in my room. I hear nearly all of my cases in this modest sized room, which we call Chambers. If I look through the window to my left I can see the Cathedral, a really splendid sight.
You will see that we do not wear our robes and wig when doing our daily work. These are now only worn on ceremonial occasions.
You will see the Royal Coat of Arms on the wall at the back, as a badge of authority for all to see and a reminder to the Judge of his Oath of Allegiance and Judicial Oath.
On the desk you will see that I have my computer and you will also see the microphones, as all the hearings that we conduct are recorded from start to finish.
As I said I hear nearly all of my cases in this room. Very occasionally, I may need to use a courtroom within the building if the case I am hearing involves too many people to fit into my small room.
SLIDE 6
This is a typical courtroom with the Judge behind a bench on a raised platform, or dais, and much more room for the litigants, their lawyers and members of the public. You can see the witness box on the left. But now back to my room.
SLIDE 7
This is the view that I have in my Chambers. On the blue chairs immediately in front of me will sit the parties to the claim, with their lawyers if they have them. Sometimes the parties have two lawyers, one a barrister, a specialist advocate and the other, a solicitor, who will have prepared the case for them and then instructed the barrister to present the case in court. The second lawyer will sit at the table behind.
You will see a single brown chair at the very back of the room. This is a very important chair, particularly in relation to the hearing of small claims and I wonder if anyone knows who this chair is for.
This chair is there for any member of the public who would like to be present during the final hearing of the small claim. These final hearings of small claims are held in public and any member of the public is entitled to attend. There is only the one chair because it is very rare that any member of the public wants to be present. If more than one person wishes to be there we will provide other chairs or even move to the courtroom if necessary.
Although I say that it is very rare that anyone wants to see small claims hearings, it does happen, as the next slide will demonstrate.
SLIDE 8
This was an article which appeared on the BBC News website on 9th October 2013. A similar article appeared on the front page of a number of local and national newspapers the next morning. The BBC article begins “A train operator’s legal pursuit of a commuter over a ticket loophole was “unreasonable”, a judge has ruled. This report did not actually name the Judge, but that Judge was in fact me and my name did appear in the newspapers the next morning.
The County Court at St Albans where this hearing took place is smaller than the one at Peterborough. It has only one District Judge, whereas there are 3 of us at Peterborough. On this particular day, that District Judge was on leave and I had agreed to take his day’s cases for him. I did not know what cases were in the list until I arrived at St Albans that morning and I was interested to see that there was a small claims hearing of a claim brought by a gentleman against a train operator, First Capital Connect. This company operated the commuter trains from St Albans, which is just outside London and to the north-west, into the City of London.
When I reached this particular case in my list, the usher came in to my chambers to inform me that the Claimant, the gentleman bringing the claim, was here and was representing himself. The Defendant, the train company, was represented by a barrister. The usher was rather flustered and she explained to me that there were also several newspaper and TV journalists here who wanted to hear the claim. The Claimant very much wanted them to come in, whereas the Defendant’s barrister wanted me to exclude them.
The Defendant’s barrister will have realised that he had no hope of persuading me that I should exclude the press and TV and I told the usher to remind the parties that small claims hearings take place in public and to tell all concerned that whoever wished to come in was welcome to do so. So the hearing went ahead with a row of journalists sitting at the back of the chambers.
Time does not permit me to go into great detail about the case, and this is not a case which is typical of the many cases that I have to hear, but you may be interested to know what it was that so interested the newspapers and the BBC.
The Claimant lived in St Albans and travelled in daily by train to the City of London where he worked. He caught the train each morning at St Albans station, and he travelled with a season ticket which he purchased each year. This particular year, he decided to buy his season ticket online and went on to the Defendant’s website to do this. Being a resourceful man, he searched their website thoroughly for the best deal. He discovered that the cost of a season ticket from Watford, a town about 6 miles away from St Albans and on a different railway line into London, was £700 cheaper than a ticket from St Albans. He then went on to the National Rail website and discovered that people travelling from Watford could, if they wished, travel via St Albans. So what he did was to buy online the cheaper ticket from Watford, but of course, he continued to catch the train at his home station of St Albans.
All went well for a while, but then one morning a ticket inspector refused to allow the Claimant to travel. When the Claimant showed him a print out of the National Rail website, he still refused him access to the station, saying the website must be wrong.
Of course, the Claimant still had to get to work each morning, so what he did was to buy another season ticket. He then sued the train operator in the County Court and because the amount involved was less than £5,000.00 it was a small claim.
To cut a long story short, the train operator defended the claim but eventually discovered that the National Rail website was showing the Watford-St Albans route as a valid one for travel into London. Some few days before 9th October 2013, the date of the hearing at the County Court in St Albans, the train operator wrote to the Claimant and offered to settle his claim in full, but only if he would agree to keep the settlement private. The Claimant rejected the offer, believing that there was a “public interest in the claim being heard”, as he later told the BBC reporter.
So the train operator’s lawyer trying to persuade me to exclude the public from the hearing was no doubt a last attempt to avoid publicity. I suspect that the train operator was playing for time, wanting to secure a change to the National Rail website before every commuter living in St Albans had the chance to buy a cheaper season ticket.
But let us move on.
SLIDE 9
A small claim can sometimes come to the public’s attention for two reasons. The first reason is that the claim raises a point of law, how a particular legal principle is to be interpreted and applied. The second reason is that this point of law can affect thousands, even millions of people.
On this slide are two such cases which were, at the beginning, small claims. The first was a claim for an £85.00 car parking charge for staying longer than the permitted time; the second was a claim for £300.00 compensation for a delayed airline flight. Time does not permit me to go into detail about these cases, other than to tell you that they both resulted in an appeal being made against the decision of the District Judge (not me in these particular cases) which so far has found its way up to the Court of Appeal. I do not expect that the appeals will go any further than this, either to the Supreme Court, or even to the European Court of Justice, but we must leave them there.
SLIDE 10
So how does a claim come to be dealt with by the small claims procedure? It does not start life as a small claim. It only becomes a small claim when a District Judge makes an order to that effect. I will explain how that happens.
The vast majority of civil claims are brought in the County Court. There is in fact no financial limit on its jurisdiction, but claims of exceptionally high value might be brought in the High Court and there are certain types of case, though very few, such as defamation, which have to be heard in the High Court. Apart from these few exceptions which have to be in the High Court, claims can be transferred from the County Court to the High Court and vice versa, that is from the High Court to the County Court, if a Judge so decides.