The High Court has refused John Gaynor’s application to re-enter a judicial review over the Courts Service’s refusal to accept his application to set aside a bankruptcy summons.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys ruled on 16 December 2016 that the High Court could not re-enter the judicial review, which had ended with a final order refusing leave in November 2015. The judge said the Court of Appeal’s earlier grant of liberty to re-enter applied to that court, not the High Court.
Gaynor, who had been adjudicated bankrupt, argued that it was just to allow the judicial review to resume. His central point was that he had not ultimately been given the opportunity, in the bankruptcy proceedings, to raise points about the summons as he said had initially been indicated by the bankruptcy judge.
The judge said the application was fundamentally misconceived. He also recalled that the original refusal of leave relied on a finding that Gaynor’s papers had not complied with court rules. That issue was fatal to his case regardless of the assurance he now sought to challenge, the judge said.
The court further held that the requested relief had become irrelevant because the bankruptcy summons had effectively been superseded by a court adjudication order, which Gaynor had appealed. The judge said the available route was to challenge that order by an application to set it aside or by appeal, and noted that an appeal had already been brought.
The Court of Appeal had struck out Gaynor’s earlier appeal against the refusal of leave in March 2016, with liberty to re-enter, apparently subject to compliance with that court’s directions. Separately, it dismissed his out-of-time appeal against the bankruptcy adjudication in October 2016. The judgment said an application for leave to appeal that decision to the Supreme Court was pending.
The High Court refused the application for leave to re-enter the judicial review and the other reliefs sought in the notice of motion.