PracticeProceedings pending before ECHR - determination unable to affect rights of parties to domestic litigation - stay of possession order refusedLocabail (UK) Ltd and another v Waldorf Investment Corpn and others (No.3): ChD (Evans-Lombe J): 25 May 2000A solicitor sitting as a deputy High Court judge dismissed the third defendant's application to have a possession order in respect of her former matrimonial home set aside.

Before the order had been drawn up, the third defendant requested the deputy judge to disqualify himself from the case and to direct a rehearing before another judge because other members of the firm in which he was a partner had acted for a company which had obtained a bankruptcy order against aco-defendant in the possession proceedings.

The deputy judge dismissed the application (see [1999] Gazette, 19 May, 39) a decision subsequently upheld by the Court of Appeal [2000] 2 WLR 870.

The third defendant com-plained to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that she had been denied a fair trial by an independent and impartial tribunal in breach of art.6(1) of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1953 (Cmd 8969), and sought a stay of execution in respect of the possession order pending the determination of the ECHR.Michael Patchett-Joyce (instructed by Stephenson Harwood) for the third defendant.

Anthony Mann QC and James Barker (instructed by More Fisher Brown) for the claimants.Held, dismissing the application, that the proceedings before the ECHR were against the United Kingdom for failing to provide a court which conformed to art.6(1) of the Convention to decide her case and would not determine what if any equitable rights the third defendant had in relation to her former matrimonial home; that the latter issue had been finally determined by the deputy judge and upheld by the Court of Appeal for the purposes of domestic law; that neither art.8 of the Convention nor art.1 of the First Protocol to the Convention would be infringed by the enforcement of the existing judgment, since the rights contained therein were expressly declared to be subject to the conditions provided for by domestic law, which in the present case was as decided upon by the Court of Appeal; that even if the ECHR found in favour of the third defendant, her remedy would be limited to 'just satisfaction' from the government of the United Kingdom, namely damages to compensate her for the inability of the United Kingdom to obtain for her a retrial of her claim to an equitable interest in the property; that there was no basis on which the execution of the possession order could be adversely affected by any determination the ECHR could make; and that therefore there were no grounds for granting the stay.