Apollo Engineering Ltd v James Scott Ltd (Scotland)

Summary

Trinty Term
[2013] UKSC 37
On appeal from: [2012] CSIH 4; [2012] CSIH 88

JUDGMENT

Apollo Engineering Limited (Appellant) v James Scott Limited (Respondent) (Scotland)

before

Lord Hope, Deputy President
Lord Clarke
Lord Carnwath

JUDGMENT GIVEN ON

13 June 2013

Heard on 13 May 2013

Appellant Gabriel Politakis		Respondent Nick Ellis QC (Instructed by Macroberts LLP)

		Advocate to the Court Andrew Young QC (Instructed by Faculty Solicitor)

LORD HOPE (with whom Lord Clarke and Lord Carnwath agree)

From time to time cases come before the courts that try the patience of even the most phlegmatic of judges. This, I fear, is one of them. On the one side there is an articulate and determined litigant who suffers from an implacable belief that his case has not been dealt with justly and, because he has run out of money, cannot afford to be represented. On the other is an opposing party for whom these proceedings have been dragging on for far too long and which has little or no prospect of recovering any of its expenses. One may regret the situation in which that party finds itself. But our basic common law rule that a party is entitled to a fair hearing applies not only to those whom the court finds it easy to deal with, but to everyone. That is the standard the judges who have dealt with this case in the Court of Session set for themselves at each stage in the proceedings, as their carefully reasoned opinions amply demonstrate. So, had it not been for an order that they made because they regarded the proceedings as incapable of achieving anything of value, the case would not have been open to consideration by the Supreme Court at all. As it is, the course they took has raised the possibility which this court cannot ignore that the interlocutor which they pronounced may, after all, be appealable.

Mr and Mrs Politakis are the directors and the only shareholders of Apollo Engineering Ltd ("Apollo"). They wish to appeal to this court against two interlocutors that were pronounced in a case that was stated for the opinion of the Court of Session under section 3 of the Administration of Justice (Scotland) Act 1972 ("the 1972 Act") on 28 September 2007. The case had been stated on the application of Apollo before section 3 of the 1972 Act was repealed by paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 to the Arbitration (Scotland) Act 2010. The arbitration proceedings to which the stated case related arose out of a contractual dispute between Apollo and James Scott Ltd about pipe construction work which Apollo had been carrying out for James Scott Ltd in 1990 at Coulport. James Scott Ltd are the respondents to these proceedings.

On 18 January 2012 an Extra Division of the Inner House (Lady Paton and Lords Reed and Bracadale) refused a motion enrolled by Mr Politakis in his own name, as Apollo had run out of funds and could no longer afford legal representation:…

JUDGMENT