Justice Delayed: Judge Sanctioned for Late Judgment

It is an unwritten rule that judgments should be delivered within three months of a hearing. The Court of Appeal has pronounced that this general rule should be adhered to even in long and complex cases, prompting Sir Geoffrey Vos to utter the trite epithet “Justice delayed is justice denied”: Bank St Petersburg PJSC & Anor v Arkhangelsky & Anor [2020] EWCA Civ 408

The rationale for this approach, as has been oft repeated, is that any other approach will lead to a loss of public and business confidence in our justice system.

In St Petersburg PJSC which the Court of Appeal considered in 2020, the delay was 22 months which the appeal court found on any analysis was inexcusable.

But delays continue. In the last few days an experienced judge of the Family Division was issued with formal advice by the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office after an investigation found delivering a judgment 18 months after the hearing amounted to judicial misconduct. The judge explained that he was facing challenging personal circumstances and a busy workload.

In 2021 the Court of Appeal considered a case where judgment was delivered 19 months after the closing submissions at trial with a further 6 month delay in dealing with consequential matters: Natwest Markets Plc & Anor v Bilta (UK) Ltd & Ors [2021] EWCA Civ 680.

This differently constituted court also found that the delay was inexcusable: “It should not have happened and should not have been allowed to happen, particularly in a case where there were allegations of dishonesty, and the reputations and future employment prospects of the individuals concerned were at stake.”

As was said by Peter Gibson LJ in  Goose v Wilson Sandford & Co [1998] TLR 85: “A judge’s tardiness in completing his judicial task after trial is over denies justice to the winning party during the period of the delay. It also undermines the loser’s confidence in the correctness of the decision when it is eventually delivered. Litigation causes quite enough stress, as it is, for people have to endure whilst a trial is going on. Compelling them to await judgment for an indefinitely extended period after the trial is over will only serve to prolong their anxiety, and may well increase it. Conduct like this weakens public confidence in the whole judicial process. Left unchecked it would be ultimately subversive of the rule of law. Delays on this scale cannot and will not be tolerated.”

These are all powerful words from the Court of Appeal but we live and practise in an era where courts and judges are overburdened with work, many of the cases over which they preside are complex and their judgments run to several hundreds of paragraphs.

This raises questions:

• What responsibility does the senior judiciary take for ensuring that judges are given adequate time and resources to deliver their judgments on time?
• What central controls are there to monitor delays in producing judgments and what tools are available to assist a judge who may be falling behind?
• When judges feel overwhelmed with their judicial work (exacerbated perhaps by personal difficulties) do they have a judicial mentor to whom they may turn for help and support? That is to say, someone who may genuinely advise and help rather than expedite a review by the Judicial Conduct Office.

These are not matters that should be ignored. There are now plenty of ways in which complaints may be made about judges but what ways are there to help them?

This is not a matter which will go away. It is well known that the court system is overburdened and under-resourced. If all we are prepared to do is sanction judges who are seen to fall behind, it will inevitably lead to early retirements and a shortage in the recruitment of skilled judges that our system of justice so badly needs.