The High Court refused Arnaud Gaultier’s application for Mr Justice Cregan to recuse himself from proceedings brought by Gaultier and Sup Pliable Limited against three defendants. The court said it would then consider the first and second defendants’ motions to strike out the claims against them; those motions had not been heard on 16 November 2023 because the recusal application took almost the entire day.
Gaultier also sought to set aside the judge’s decisions of 16 May and 28 July 2023, remove the third defendant from the proceedings, amend the plenary summons and extend time to file a statement of claim. The judgment records that the judge refused a request to revisit the ruling that Gaultier could not represent the company, and allowed him 21 days to amend the summons. Time to file the statement of claim was extended to 1 December 2023. The judgment does not determine the defendants’ strike-out applications.
The recusal application relied on allegations including bias, improper case assignment, mishandling of a booklet of pleadings and possible interference with hearing transcripts. Gaultier had made a recusal application in June 2023 and withdrawn it after the judge explained how the case had been assigned and how the papers had been handled. The judge found the later application was based on the same grounds.
In refusing recusal, the judge applied the objective test of whether a reasonable, informed and fair-minded observer would reasonably apprehend that the judge would not bring an impartial mind to the case. He rejected the allegations, finding no basis for recusal. He said the case had been assigned through the ordinary process and the booklet had been retained for the assigned judge. He also said the transcript had not been altered apart from the judge’s own ex tempore ruling, which was revised for accuracy and clarity.
The judgment further recounts that, during the 16 November hearing, Gaultier continued submissions remotely from his car after leaving court. The judge permitted the remote continuation, but later ended the hearing temporarily after learning that Gaultier’s children were in the car during in camera proceedings. The judge characterised this conduct and the renewed recusal application as abuse of process. Those are the judge’s findings in the recusal decision.
The third defendant was Gaultier’s wife. The judgment’s addendum says he discontinued the proceedings against her. On 17 January 2024, with all parties’ agreement, the court lifted the order requiring the proceedings to be heard in camera with the parties’ identities redacted.