JUDGES TOLD NOT TO REVEAL INNOCENT RELATIONSHIPS
Judges should be circumspect about declaring any relationships with the lawyers appearing before them where there is no real possibility of bias, the Court of Appeal said this week.In a key judgment presided over by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, and the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the court also said that in exceptional circumstances, it can reopen an appeal after its final judgment.Lord Woolf said that since Pinochet, complaints about judicial bias are becoming 'increasingly prevalent'.Taylor v Lawrence concerned a boundary dispute.
At trial, the deputy circuit judge at Watford County Court, Peter Goldstone, declared that he had been a client of the claimants' solicitors - Watford firm Mathew Arnold & Baldwin (MAB) - from four years previously and that MAB still held his and his wife's will.
The parties agreed he should continue presiding.The defendants lost, and subsequent to permission to appeal being granted, it was disclosed that the judge and his wife had in fact used MAB to amend their will the night before he gave judgment.The appeal nonetheless failed, but after that, the defendants discovered that the judge did not pay for MAB's services, a fact he had not disclosed.
The firm said the work was not worth rendering a bill for.If judges declare relationships where there is no likelihood of bias, Lord Woolf said 'it unnecessarily raises an implication that it could affect the judgment and approach of the judge'.
If the position is borderline, disclosure should be made.While finding the judge's partial disclosure to be 'undesirable', Lord Woolf said the bias case was not made out.
'We regard it as unthinkable that an informed observer would regard it as conceivable that a judge would be influenced to favour a party in litigation with whom he has no relationship merely because that party happens to be represented by a firm of solicitors who are acting for the judge in a purely personal matter in connection with a will,' he said.On the issue of jurisdiction, Lord Woolf said the Court of Appeal can reopen cases in exceptional circumstances - alleged judicial bias being one - to avoid real injustice; but the court should also protect those entitled reasonably to believe the litigation is at an end.By Neil Rose
