McIver v Longo

[2001] QCA 14

[2001] QCA 14

COURT OF APPEAL

de JERSEY CJ
McPHERSON JA
MACKENZIE J

No 9682 of 2000

STEPHEN RICHARD McIVER               Respondent (Plaintiff)

and

COSMO LONGO  Appellant (Defendant)

BRISBANE

..DATE 05/02/2001

JUDGMENT

THE CHIEF JUSTICE:  The applicant sued the respondent,
Mr McIver, in the Magistrates Court for the amounts of alleged debts.

The respondent later commenced proceedings against the applicant in the District Court for damages for alleged breaches of a joint venture agreement said to have involved the payment of the amounts sued for by the applicant in the Magistrates Court, and for damages for defamation.

The factual issue common to both proceedings is the nature of the relationship between the parties.  The learned District Court Judge ordered that the Magistrates Court proceedings be transferred into the District Court.  The applicant seeks leave to appeal against that order.

Leave to appeal is necessary under section 118 of the District Court Act 1967. The Court's discretion to grant leave is unfettered, but obviously some particular reason must be demonstrated why leave should be granted, otherwise there would be no requirement for the granting of leave.

The circumstance that the order in question here is interlocutory is plainly significant.  The result of implementation of this District Court order will not be that the applicant's contentions may not be ventilated.  It will simply be that they will be pursued in another Court, a Court considered by the learned Judge to have been the more appropriate Court, no doubt especially bearing in mind the amount involved overall, which was well beyond the monetary jurisdiction of the Magistrates Court.

Appellate Courts are not generally anxious to intervene in the area of interlocutory orders of a procedural kind unless manifest injustice is likely, and that is certainly not this case.

The Judge considered that all issues of controversy between the parties should be determined in the one Court, which had therefore, in light of the monetary consideration, to be the District Court.  It is hard to quarrel with that approach.

The applicant points, among other things, to the circumstance that his action in the Magistrates Court had been set on the road to possible conciliation.  That however should not have obliged the District Court Judge to maintain differential proceedings.

There is no general point of principle involved here.  There is no suspicion of injustice.  Indeed I consider the District Court Judge likely to have been right, otherwise these parties would have been left with two proceedings running in separate Courts arising from a generally common substratum of fact, with possible subsequent argument about such questions as issue estoppel and res judicata.

Especially allowing for this decision's having been of an interlocutory, discretionary and procedural character, it would not in my view be conducive to the efficient administration of justice were we to facilitate an appeal now.

I would refuse the application with costs to be assessed.

McPHERSON JA:  I agree.

MACKENZIE J:  I agree.

THE CHIEF JUSTICE:  Those are the orders.

-----