Judge praises skilled advocacy in ‘titanic’ family case

A retiring judge praised legal representatives involved in ‘titanic litigation’ of a financial remedy case describing it as a ‘pleasure to conclude my judicial career with the receipt of such skilful advocacy’.

Mr Justice Mostyn ended his 36-page judgment in Susan Nancy Baker v Andrew Hartill Baker by ‘applauding the skill, assiduity and diligence of all the lawyers involved in this complex case’.

He added: ‘The written and oral work from the bar has been of the highest quality. The attention to detail from counsel has been outstanding. Mr and Mrs Baker should understand that their interests were represented fearlessly by counsel and that no stone was left unturned in their representation.’

The case concerned a divorced couple where the wife sought the award of £9.34m arguing the husband had ‘squirrelled away at least $35m’.

The pair married in 1986 and separated in 2000, according to the husband, while the wife said the marriage ‘endured on an intermittent basis’ until 2013.

Andrew’s net value of his visible assets was around £5.6m while Susan’s assets stood at around £5.8m. The total costs of the proceedings was some £1.8m - £1,377,837 attributed to the wife’s costs and the husband’s total costs reached £426,458.

The judge highlighted the importance of ‘being on guard against the influence of demeanour’ as the ‘thespian performance’ of witnesses is not ‘in any material way’ part of the evidence.

He said: ‘I consider demeanour to be a highly unreliable method of judging veracity.  If the court is not on its guard, the influence of demeanour may insinuate itself into a trial judge’s subconscious and contribute to the formation of an adverse perception of the witness as an unworthy person who does not deserve to succeed in the litigation. The formation of such a perception would be a form of bias.'  

A judge's job is to examine the actual evidence, he said, putting aside 'my irritation, indeed affront, at the shocking, grossly offensive way in which the husband gave his evidence'.

The judge described the husband's personality as ‘a toxic mixture of arrogance and dishonesty' and that he 'lied systematically to this court'.

‘The law is not so mono-dimensional as to conclude automatically that if a party has lied to the court, then the fact in issue about which the lie was told must be decided adversely to that party.'

The judge found the allegation the husband had ‘hidden funds’ not proved, adding it would be ‘wrong to draw inferences that he has any such funds based simply on his dishonesty’.

The husband was ordered to pay a lump sum of £1,614,000, which included £200,000 towards the wife’s costs to ‘reflect both his estimated liability under a clutch of interlocutory orders and the court’s very strong condemnation of his delinquency’.

Mostyn said: ‘The effect of that payment will be that the husband’s deemed net worth reduces to £3,941,565 (or 35%) while the wife’s increases to £7,458,895 (65%).

‘The result of this titanic litigation has been to decrease the husband’s net worth by £2,040,458. Of this, £1,804,285 has gone, or will go, to the lawyers and £236,173 will go to the wife.

‘It is sobering to note that if the parties had not litigated and spent £1.8 million in costs they would have respectively £6 million (husband) and £7.2 million (wife).’

A further costs order means the total lump sum to be paid by the husband is £1,633,795. 

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