The Court of Appeal ordered that, whatever the outcome of an appeal, costs associated with preparation of the Court of Appeal bundle will not be recoverable if the bundle does not comply with Paragraph 27 of Practice Direction 52C (appeals to the Court of Appeal) of the Civil Procedure Rules.
The appeal raised a question concerning the proper operation of CPR Part 24 (Summary Judgment) in the context of multi-party construction litigation. However, before addressing this question, Lord Justice Jackson made the following comments on the appeal bundle:
- Paragraph 27 of Practice Direction 52C sets out clearly what documents should be included and, more importantly, what documents should not.
- Specifically, paragraph 27 (1) provides that the appeal bundle “must contain only those documents relevant to the appeal”.
- In the present appeal bundle there are numerous duplicates and irrelevant documents. The arrangement of the correspondence is, to put it charitably, chaotic. It is certainly not chronological. Amongst the jumble of correspondence there are copies of superfluous authorities. The brief chronology furnished by the parties does not contain any page references to aid the hapless judge as he/she struggles to piece together the story of what happened.
- The appeal bundle should be an aid to the Court, not an obstacle course. The Practice Direction governing the conduct of appeals is not difficult to understand. It serves a serious purpose. Experienced practitioners should do what it says.
- Consequently, whatever the outcome of the appeal, no party will be entitled to recover any costs referable to the preparation of the bundle.
Lord Justice Tomlinson and Lord Justice Floyd agreed with Lord Justice Jackson and the decision not to award costs for preparing the bundle to either party was held.
In relation to the pivotal question in the appeal, the Court of Appeal held that the appeal should be allowed as the requirements of CPR 24.2 (grounds for summary judgment) had not been met.
The Honorary Edward Iliffe and Mrs Teleri Iliffe (as Respondents) v Feltham Construction Limited (as Appellant) and others [2015] EWCA Civ 715
