The High Court refused I.K.’s application for leave to appeal and made costs orders in three judicial review cases concerning the Minister for Justice and Equality. The ruling, delivered by Mr Justice Richard Humphreys on 13 March 2018, followed an earlier judgment refusing all three applications for judicial review.
I.K., identified in the proceedings as being from Georgia, sought leave to appeal. The judge said she had failed on four independent grounds in the substantive case: the challenge was a collateral attack on a deportation order; it was jus tertii; her arguments had no substance; and relief was refused as a matter of discretion.
The proposed appeal issues included whether the proceedings were out of time, the treatment of her husband’s refugee status and return to Georgia, and the Minister’s handling of the declaration of refugee status. The judge said he had not held the proceedings to be out of time. He said the Minister had not discounted the husband’s previous refugee declaration and described the proposed issues as either fact-specific, without substance, or insufficient to raise a point of law of exceptional public importance.
The judge also addressed the discretionary refusal of relief. He said the substantive judgment had identified alleged evasion of the statutory scheme, misleading the Minister and the court, and frustration of a related civil registration requirement. He said discretion had to be assessed case by case and that a case-specific alleged misapplication of established law was not, by itself, grounds for leave to appeal. The court refused leave under section 5 of the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act 2000, finding that neither the exceptional-public-importance requirement nor the public-interest test was met.
On costs, the court applied the general rule that costs follow the event. In I.K. and K.N., it dismissed the applicants’ costs applications and awarded costs to the respondents, to be taxed if not agreed. In M.A.M., the judge said earlier State representations had encouraged a challenge to the application of section 47(9) of the International Protection Act 2015. He ordered no costs up to delivery of the State’s written legal submissions; the respondent was entitled to costs of the substantive hearing and later applications, to be taxed if not agreed.