In our previous article, we examined how a county court entered final judgment — a permanent injunction, £9,000 in damages, and £17,440 in costs — in proceedings that were never issued. No claim form was ever dated by any court. The court service confirmed it in writing. The trial judge himself acknowledged it on the record in January 2026.
That article set out the chronology: an N16A injunction application filed without a claim, an unless order requiring Part 7 proceedings that was never complied with, a circuit judge who refused relief from sanctions, and a different circuit judge who continued the matter on the false premise that proceedings had been issued.
We explained why the subsequent suggestion to regularise the N16A as a Part 8 claim form is legally impossible. Such would benefit a claimant of his own error, a fact the Appeals Cour has already stated offends justice.
Since publication, there has been a closer analysis of the circuit judge’s approved judgment from April 2023, the judgment that artificially kept this matter alive. What it reveals goes beyond a single factual error. It exposes a cascade of procedural missteps, any one of which independently prevents the regularisation now being contemplated.
Together, they paint a picture of a court that did not look carefully enough (or at all) at what was before it raising the question, was it all a foregone conclusion, just to process the defendant?
A Judgment Built on Sand
The April 2023 judgment runs to just three pages and little over 1,200 words. It was delivered orally at the return date of an ex-parte without-notice injunction. Its purpose was to decide whether the injunction should be continued. But within those three pages, the circuit judge made a series of statements and assumptions that have shaped and distorted the entire trajectory of this litigation. We examine them in turn.
“Proceedings Had in Fact Been Issued”
Wrong. This load-bearing statement of the entire judgment appears at paragraph 9. The circuit judge told the defendant that before granting the injunction, he had seen that proceedings had in fact been issued and was therefore prepared to proceed on the basis that the claim was not struck out. This is false. No proceedings had been issued. An experienced circuit judge would know that a claim form without a date of issue is not an issued claim form, so either he did not look at the document he claims to have seen, or he looked at it and misrepresented what it showed. There is no third possibility. One could be forgiven for concluding that the circuit judge simply lied.
This is now confirmed by multiple independent sources: the court service in writing in September 2024, the presiding district judge on the record in January 2026, and the inability of anyone; claimants, their counsel, or the court itself to produce an issued claim form at any point in three years. The circuit judge was not making a deliberate decision to overlook a procedural defect. He was not exercising discretion to waive a requirement. He believed, wrongly, that the requirement had been met. That distinction is critical. It means his judgment cannot be treated as authority for the proposition that valid proceedings existed. He would not have continued the injunction had he known the truth even though there was an apparent bias.
The Wrong Rule, Wrongly Stated
Having wrongly assumed that a claim form existed, the circuit judge applied CPR 7.5 to explain the service position. He told the defendant that a claim form need not be served until three months after its issue. Two problems. CPR 7.5(1) provides four months for service of a claim form within the jurisdiction, not three. The judge misstated a basic procedural provision while relying on it to keep proceedings alive. More fundamentally, CPR 7.5 is a Part 7 rule. It sits within Part 7 of the Civil Procedure Rules and governs the service of Part 7 claim forms. By invoking it in the hearing, the circuit judge was treating these as Part 7 proceedings. That is consistent with the original district judge’s unless order, which required Part 7. It is wholly inconsistent with any subsequent determined attempt to recharacterise these proceedings as Part 8. A judge applying Part 7 service rules to validate the procedural position has made a judicial determination, on the record, that these are Part 7 proceedings (issued or not). That determination cannot now be wished away.
The High Court Heading and the Impossible Transfer
At paragraph 11, the circuit judge noted that the particulars of claim bore a High Court heading. Rather than treating this as a red flag, why would county court proceedings carry a High Court heading? He simply stated that he took the proceedings to have been issued in the county court and transferred them “in so far as necessary” to the County Court. That language does a great deal of work and requires close attention.
“I take these proceedings to have been issued in the County Court”
is not a finding of fact. It is an assumption. The circuit judge did not say he had verified where proceedings were issued. He did not say he had examined an issued claim form. He did not explain why documents bore the wrong court’s heading. He assumed… and moved on. We now know why the documents bore a High Court heading. The claimants had applied to the High Court, which was the correct court for their defamation claim. But the High Court never issued proceedings either. No court did. The High Court heading is not a filing error. It is a trace of an attempt to commence proceedings that never reached completion, the same heading on the unissued claim form.
The Statutory Bar That Nobody Noticed
This brings us to what may be the most significant finding from the transcript, and one that appears to have been overlooked throughout the entire history of this litigation by the relevant judges. The claim included defamation as one of its causes of action. This was recorded on the original district judge’s order in March 2023. The circuit judge acknowledged at paragraph 11 that aspects of the particulars of claim involving defamation were “not suitable for this court“. Yet he transferred the whole matter to the county court anyway. Section 15(2)(c) of the County Courts Act 1984, which remains in force and up to date as of March 2026, provides in terms:
“The county court shall not, except as in this Act provided, have jurisdiction to hear and determine — (c) any action for libel or slander.”
The county court has no jurisdiction over defamation. That is not a procedural rule. It is primary legislation. It admits of only two exceptions: first, where the parties agree by signed memorandum under section 18 of the same Act to give the county court jurisdiction; second, where the claim is transferred from the High Court under section 40. Neither exception applies here. The defendant was never asked to agree and never did. No signed memorandum exists. And no proceedings were ever issued in the High Court, so there was nothing to transfer under section 40. The circuit judge purported to transfer defamation proceedings to a court that Parliament has said cannot hear them, from a court in which proceedings had never been issued, without the consent of the defendant. This has a direct and fatal consequence for the regularisation now being contemplated. CPR 3.10 is a procedural rule. It cannot override an Act of Parliament. No exercise of case management powers, however creative, can confer on the county court a jurisdiction that statute denies it. If the district judge now regularises the N16A as a Part 8 claim in the county court, that claim would include defamation and the county court would still have no jurisdiction to hear it.
The Judge’s Own Words Preclude Part 8
Quite apart from the statutory bar, the circuit judge’s own findings in April 2023 make Part 8 regularisation procedurally impossible. CPR 8.1(2) provides that Part 8 may only be used where the claim is unlikely to involve a substantial dispute of fact. At paragraphs 3 through 5 of the judgment, the circuit judge recorded no fewer than seven separate factual disputes raised by the defendant:
- that the allegations were malicious and false;
- that recordings had been published by the claimants themselves;
- that police were investigating threats from a claimant’s partner;
- that former clients had been counselled to lie to police;
- that money had been taken inappropriately;
- that the defendant’s personal information had been sent to a third party; and
- that one of the claimants had described the defendant to others as a paedophile.
At paragraph 7, the circuit judge said in terms that these were points that would need to be determined at trial, that there was no oral evidence, there had been no disclosure, and the court was not in a position to determine facts. That is a judicial finding, from within these very proceedings that the case requires disclosure, oral evidence, and a trial to resolve contested facts. Those are Part 7 mechanisms. Part 8 provides for none of them. The circuit judge’s own judgment is, in effect, a judicial certificate that Part 8 is structurally incompatible with this claim.
Particulars of Claim: A Part 7 Document
The circuit judge referred to “the particulars of claim” at paragraphs 10 and 11. He discussed their failure of service and their incorrect court heading. Under Part 8, there are no particulars of claim. The Part 8 equivalent is written evidence filed and served under CPR 8.5. “Particulars of claim” is exclusively Part 7 terminology, governed by CPR 7.4. The claimants drafted, filed, and presented to the (High) Court a document called particulars of claim. That is a Part 7 act. It cannot be retrospectively relabelled as Part 8 written evidence. The two documents serve different procedural functions, have different formal requirements, and operate within different procedural frameworks. The very existence of particulars of claim in the court file is further confirmation (as if it were needed) that these proceedings were conceived, drafted, and managed as Part 7.
The Unless Order Required Part 7
This point bears repetition, because it is sometimes lost in the procedural complexity that followed. In March 2023, a district judge considered the N16A, considered the causes of action, and made an unless order requiring Part 7 proceedings to be issued. Not Part 8. Part 7. That was a considered judicial determination about the correct procedure for this claim. If a district judge now (attempts to) regularises the N16A as Part 8, he is not curing a procedural error. He is substituting his own judgment for the express direction of the first judge to consider the procedural position. He is saying, in substance, that the original district judge was wrong to require Part 7; but without explaining why, without hearing argument on the point, and without confronting the causes of action that led to the Part 7 direction in the first place.
The Conversion That Cannot Run
Even setting aside every other objection, there is a structural impossibility that no amount of judicial ingenuity can overcome. CPR 8.9 gives the court power to order that a Part 8 claim continue as if the claimant had not used the Part 8 procedure. The power runs in one direction only: Part 8 to Part 7. There is no corresponding rule permitting conversion from Part 7 to Part 8, and there is certainly no rule permitting conversion from the High Court (or nothing at all) to Part 8. The CPR contemplates that a claim started under Part 8 may need to move to Part 7 when factual disputes emerge. The reverse is not provided for, because it makes no procedural sense. You do not strip away Part 7 protections; disclosure, witness statements, cross-examination after they have been engaged. And you cannot invoke a conversion mechanism to create proceedings that simply never existed.
The N16A Fails on Its Own Terms
Even if the procedural route existed (which it does not) and even if the statutory bar did not apply (which it does) the N16A itself cannot serve as a Part 8 claim form. Gotti v Perrett [2025] EWHC 2434 requires functional equivalence to a claim form. The issued N16A failed on multiple independent grounds. The Part 8 box was not ticked. There is no statement of truth, which is a mandatory requirement under CPR 22.1 that CPR 3.10 cannot cure. There is no written evidence as required by CPR 8.5. What is sought was relief for non-parties, the claimants’ company and its employees, who are not named claimants. Mandatory sections for evidence in support and service details are not completed. The handwritten relief on the second page goes beyond what a court could grant. This is not a document that substantially fulfils the function of a claim form with minor defects. It is an application notice with fundamental deficiencies that no procedural rule can retrospectively repair.
The Timeline That Destroys Retrospective Rescue
Gotti was decided in September 2025. The trial judgment was entered in April 2024. At the date of judgment, the principle now being contemplated did not exist. The legal landscape at that point was clear: no claim form issued, unless order breached, automatic strike-out, relief from sanctions refused lodged in High Court, no memorandum, the trial judge did not purport to regularise. He did not address the jurisdictional defect. He entered judgment as though valid proceedings existed. The list goes on… A judge cannot retrospectively validate his own judgment using a principle articulated eighteen months after the event. The judgment was either valid when made or it was not. It was not. Gotti is being used like Marty vs McFly to reach back in time to cure a jurisdictional void that existed and was determinative, at the date judgment was entered.
What the Transcript Tells Us
Read in isolation, the April 2023 transcript might appear to be a routine return-date judgment. A circuit judge considered the arguments, declined to discharge the injunction, and gave directions. Read with knowledge of what we now know, that no proceedings were ever issued, that the court service has confirmed it, that the trial judge has acknowledged it, the transcript reads very differently. It is a document in which a judge assumed a foundational fact that was wrong, misstated the procedural rule he relied upon, purported to transfer proceedings between courts without statutory authority to do so, and recorded factual disputes that made the very procedure now being contemplated structurally impossible. Every sentence of that judgment that refers to “the claim” or “the proceedings” is referring to something that did not exist. Every direction that flowed from it was made without jurisdiction. And the trial that followed, with its permanent injunction, its damages, and its costs order, was built on a foundation that the circuit judge himself could not have laid had he known the truth, or the defendant was not a litigant in person.
The Pattern
This is now beyond a single judicial error. It is a pattern. A very concerning pattern. A district judge identified the defect and acted correctly. A circuit judge confirmed it and refused relief. A different circuit judge, on the same day, assumed the defect had been cured and continued. A district judge entered final judgment without addressing it. And now, when the evidence is beyond dispute, the response is not to correct the error but to search for a way to make it permanent. The Civil Procedure Rules exist to ensure fairness, transparency, and that courts act within their jurisdiction. They are not a retrospective repair kit for judgments entered in proceedings that never commenced, in a court that lacked statutory jurisdiction over the claims being advanced, on causes of action that cannot be heard under the procedure now being proposed. The defendant has spent three years attempting to have a simple proposition addressed: that you cannot enter judgment in proceedings that don’t exist. The court’s own records confirm he is right. The question that remains is whether the court will say so. Every error went one way. Every omission benefited the same party. Every judge who could have stopped this didn’t. The one who did was overridden within hours. A court service that exists to ensure procedural compliance failed to notice for three years that no proceedings had been issued. A trial judge entered final judgment in a void and when that void was proved beyond argument, his response was not to correct it but to find a way to make it permanent. This is not a pattern of mistakes. Mistakes are random. This was systematic, it was cumulative, and it only ever moved in one direction. The defendant was not litigating a civil claim. He was being processed. And every institution that should have prevented it — the judiciary, the court service, the rules themselves — was either complicit or turned a blind eye. One is left to wonder what brotherhood of interest could produce such a uniform result.
The facts are derived from approved court transcripts and judicial records. The reserved judgment on the set-aside application has not, at the time of writing, been handed down.
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