The Court of Appeal has dismissed Peter Nowak’s appeal against the refusal of his application for an order directing the High Court Central Office to process four notices of appeal. The court ruled that his application for judicial review was out of time and that there was no basis to extend the deadline.
The dispute arose after the Data Protection Commission rejected four complaints by Nowak about the processing of his personal data. The Circuit Court dismissed his appeals against those decisions on 23 November 2021. Nowak then sought to appeal to the High Court on points of law.
Nowak, who lives in Poland, sent four notices of appeal by registered post. The Central Office received and processed them on 2 December 2021, nine days after the Circuit Court decisions. An official returned the notices, saying they used the wrong format and that the title should match the Circuit Court case. The office supplied a template and said it could reuse the stamp duty already paid if Nowak submitted replacement notices.
Nowak maintained that his original notices contained the required information and asked the office to process them. On 20 December, the office said the matter had been dealt with and it could not take it further. Two days later, Nowak said he would seek mandamus if the notices were not processed immediately. He prepared a statement grounding judicial review proceedings on 29 December, but the application was first listed in the High Court on 16 May 2022.
The Court of Appeal held that the three-month deadline in the Rules of the Superior Courts applies to applications for mandamus. It found that the grounds for Nowak’s application had arisen by 20 December 2021 at the latest, making 21 March 2022 the deadline. The court treated 16 May, when the application was first moved in open court, as the earliest date it could be considered made.
The judges said Nowak had not applied for an extension of time or provided an affidavit explaining the delay. His stated reason that he was waiting for the Central Office to change its position did not amount to good and sufficient reason, the court held; the circumstances were also neither outside his control nor unforeseeable. The court therefore found no basis to extend time and said it did not need to consider his other grounds of appeal.
The appeal was dismissed. The court gave a preliminary view that the Courts Service, the respondent, should receive the appeal costs, while allowing Nowak ten days to file a written submission opposing that view and the respondent a further ten days to reply. The judgment does not record a final costs order.