Box, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department & Anor

1. MR JUSTICE WYN WILLIAMS: On 2 October 2003, the claimant was convicted at the Bristol Crown Court, before HHJ Darwell-Smith and a jury, of two offences of causing actual bodily harm. In respect of each offence, he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment. It subsequently transpired that the officer in charge of the case had spoken to a member of the jury in circumstances where that was impermissible. As a consequence of that contact between the juror and the officer in the case, the claimant appealed against his conviction to the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, and essentially on the basis of that improper contact, the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division quashed the convictions.

2. In the aftermath of that history, the claimant made a claim to the first defendant, through the second defendant, for compensation, in effect to compensate him for the time he had spent in custody between his conviction in Bristol and the quashing of his conviction at the Court of Appeal. The defendants resolved to make no payment of compensation to the claimant. In April 2006, the claimant began proceedings for judicial review of that decision. The defendants have always resisted the claim.

3. Permission was granted on 9 August 2006. I have been told this morning that, in October 2006, the solicitors who were acting for the claimant at the time he instituted his proceedings for judicial review came off the record, and since that time no other solicitor has come onto the record to conduct these proceedings.

4. The case was listed for hearing in July of this year and its listing date was today. Between July of 2007 and today, I am told by Mr Keith that his instructing solicitor has taken all the necessary and usual steps to alert the claimant to this hearing date, and indeed has forwarded to him the bundle upon which the defendants proposed to rely and the defendants' skeleton argument. Mr Keith's instructing solicitor has enquired of the court office whether or not the claimant has been in contact, but so far as he is aware there has been no contact between the court office and the claimant, in any recent time at least.

5. The upshot is that it seems to me that since about October 2006 neither the claimant nor any solicitor on his behalf has shown any interest in these proceedings. It seems to me that the inevitable inference I should draw is that the claimant no longer wishes to participate in the proceedings or prosecute them in any meaningful way.

6. He has not attended this morning. It is now almost 11 o'clock, and there is no reason to suppose that he will attend. In the circumstances which I have shortly described, I think it now appropriate to dismiss the claim, and that is what I do.

7. MR KEITH: I am very grateful, my Lord.

8. MR JUSTICE WYN WILLIAMS: You do not want to pursue a meaningless order for costs, Mr Keith?

9. MR KEITH: My Lord, no.

10. MR JUSTICE WYN WILLIAMS: Thank you.