JUDGE MITCHELL:  Are we off and running?  Jolly good. Yes, Mr. Fisher, Mr. Moore is simply acting as an  observer. He is here actually more for the criminal cases, which will follow, but he is simply observing, so he will not take part, as it were, in the decision-making process.  All right, I gather, amongst all the vast paper work, as you can see it all spread out on this bench, we have a letter somewhere from Mrs. Lindridge – however could I forget that name – that she is ill or she has got some sort of medical attendance. I do not know whether you have seen it?

MR. FISHER:  Your Honour, I have not, no.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  I have. It is somewhere. The trouble is we are just inundated with verbiage – which I think is probably the right description. Wait a minute. Let me just have a look at this. I have not read it properly. I am going to have another look at it. You have a copy, Mr. Fisher.

MR. FISHER: Thank you, your Honour.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  I have said we are in chambers because it is your application to strike out, and also an appeal on paper, so I regard this as a chambers hearing, rather than an open court hearing that we had last week.

MR. FISHER: Yes, your Honour, hence I am not robed either.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  That is all right. Anyway, you had better have a look at that.

MR. FISHER: Yes, your Honour.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Just have a look at that.  You can see what I mean.

MR. FISHER: Your Honour, I have read it, I have scanned it quickly.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Can I say as well I know this to be the case, I have written something, she issued two witness summonses yesterday apparently, but with the greatest reluctance on the part of the staff. So I do not know what the Dickens has happened  to those poor unfortunate people.

MR. FISHER: No, one of these poor unfortunates is Mr. Ebert actually.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Is he here?

MR. FISHER: Not as far as I know, no, but that was one of the recipients, or people she purported to summons.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Can you imagine – I say this to you, Mr. Fisher, because you probably cannot – the trouble that this woman has caused the staff over the week when all these summonses were flying around like pieces of confetti?

MR. FISHER: I can, your Honour.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  It has virtually brought the court’s business to a stand still.

MR. FISHER: Yes.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  With people ringing up, abusing the staff, thinking that they are the ones who have issued the summonses.

MR. FISHER: Your Honour, quite, and Mr. Peck, my client, of course, has had to suffer the humiliation, indignity, and embarrassment of having his reputation tarnished in this way when Mrs. Lindridge deliberately states or admits that it was her intention to publicise these allegations through court proceedings because she could not get them taken seriously anywhere else for very good reasons.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  We are not going to take them seriously. I am not taking them seriously. This is mad.

MR. FISHER: Your Honour, I invite you to press ahead with the hearing in Mrs. Lindridge’s absence.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Yes, the thing was I do not know about you, but I got the distinct impression last week – a week ago last Friday – that she was paving the way not to be here through ill health.

MR. FISHER: Yes, your Honour.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  I made it absolutely plain – and it is on the tape – that if she had an appointment I would not trouble her today, but she was obviously prevaricating about it, and then suddenly she has gone ill. There is no medical evidence to that effect. So I am afraid we press on.

MR. FISHER: I am grateful, your Honour.   Of course, your Honour will be aware that under CPR 23.11, where the applicant or any respondent fails to attend the hearing the court may proceed in his absence. Your Honour is perfectly entitled to take that view.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  You know, I have to say that in the first place I was suspicious because I thought she was paving the way for that, but there is no medical evidence and personally quite frankly if people are ill there is no difficulty about getting a doctor to say so.

MR. FISHER: Quite, your Honour. If I can just read perhaps - - - -

JUDGE MITCHELL:  23 what is it?

MR. FISHER: It is 23.11 and the notes to the autumn edition of the White Book say, “The court should be very careful before proceeding with the hearing of an application in the absence of a litigant in person especially where the litigant for the first time had asked for an adjournment of the hearing, but had refused it.” Of course, this is not the first time, far from it, and no adjournment had been requested in advance. “In these circumstances the court should only proceed in the absence of the litigant where it is satisfied i.e. (a) that it was right to grant the applicant the relief he sought” – and in my submission it is – “or (b) that the application was plainly hopeless.” Again, your Honour, I would submit that the claimant’s opposition to these applications is plainly hopeless.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Give me that again. I am using the Brown Book because I am not in the County Court.

MR. FISHER: Would you like me to read it out or shall I - - - -

JUDGE MITCHELL:  No, just give me the principles. I will make a note.

MR. FISHER: If it is a litigant in person especially the court should be careful before proceeding especially where the litigant for the first time had asked for an adjournment of the hearing, but had been refused it. In these circumstances the court should only proceed in the absence of the litigant where it is satisfied either (a) that it was right to grant the applicant the relief he sought or (b) that the application was plainly hopeless. The citation of the case for that, the authority for that, is Fox v Graham Group Limited, The Times, 3^rd August 2001. Mr. Justice Neuberger

JUDGE MITCHELL:  He seems to do an awful lot of cases that are reported, does he not? I was reading something of his last night.   He is a very busy Judge I think.  

MR. FISHER: Your Honour, the applications, if we are to proceed in the absence of the claimant, the application that I would invite your Honour to consider are those made in the application of the 8^th January which you will recall were before the Court on the last occasion, but you felt in fairness to the claimant she had not had enough time to deal with them. Those are in fact – or the first paragraph has fallen by the wayside – leave to abridge time. Secondly, that the claim be struck out. Thirdly, that the application for the injunction be dismissed. The fourth application, your Honour granted on the last occasion, which was the dismissal of the notice to show cause. Costs. Also the extended Grepe & Loam Order, if I can describe it as such.  You will recall that this is the order restraining the issue of further proceedings.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Yes, I do.

MR. FISHER: And making applications in the existing proceedings.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Can you just identify this. I have found, and I have read it, but it is a while ago, the actual statement of claim in the particulars of claim in this particular case. It is some rambling document, is it not, along with all the others.

MR. FISHER: Your Honour, the claim form – I was intending, your Honour, to read this out just to highlight for you, and for the Court, just what it is that we are dealing with here. The application has the - - - -

JUDGE MITCHELL:  I think I am beginning to realise.

MR. FISHER: The claimant has ticked the box to say that it includes issues under the Human Rights Act, although those are not spelt out at all. The details of the claim, which is the only statement of case that I have seen, is endorsed on the claim form itself, which is perfectly acceptable. Details of the claim, immediate ex parte interim injunction to last until (1) the presiding Judge has examined evidence – and your Honour will, I am sure, be aware that that just is not something that this court can order.  Then (2) a high ranking policeman from outside of Kent has been appointed to examine allegations.  Again that is not something the Court has power to do.  Sixty six witness summons have been returned, evidence examined in relation to this, and twelve other Court actions. Twelve other Court actions – as attached – except that they were not. Criminal charges to follow. As far as my client is aware there are  no criminal charges. Fourthly, “I seek a court approved statement of true facts where records, including police and medical records, have been erased, altered and are misleading and judgments changed where needed.” Your Honour, again, I would say, does not have power to order that and, in any event, it has no bearing upon my client at all unless the suggestion is that he has in some way changed the medical records, for which there is no evidence.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Oh, oh, it is the doctors – I do not know where that has come from – the poor old – it is the doctors surgery at Barstead that gets that allegation. I think she says that the police have conspired with them as well you know - - - -

MR. FISHER: Yes, reading between the lines of her statement I suspect that that arises from the fact that at some point during the medical examinations a doctor recorded on her records that if she made any allegations of rape she was not to be believed. I suspect that may be what is behind that. Your Honour, she goes on to say – and this is the only part I think that the court could possibly consider to form the basis of a statement of claim at all – “I claim aggravated damages….”  There is no indication as to why they should be “aggravated”.   “….aggravated damages and costs back to  1978.” Your Honour, I shall, in a moment, make a Limitation Act point to you.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Yes.

MR. FISHER: “I seek damages and compensation for  one  Yolande Ann Lindridge, obviously the claimant, and then there are six others, Lauren Ann Lindridge, Thomas Nigel Lindridge, Lauren Health & Safety  -- which I think is the business Mrs Lindridge has connections with  -- Kent Business Network, Lauren Training and Resources, and Patient Support. Of course, the  Court has no power to make orders in favour of those parties if they are not parties to the proceedings and they have given no indication that they wish to be.  “I would like the Courts and medical experts to explain how a man can rape and batter a woman and leave her to die in 1980 and then be allowed to pursue her for 22 years. Is his behaviour normal? What has this man to fear? What is he hiding? I would like to live without fear. I want the right to have a normal life. I want the right to do the work I am good at. I want the right to live in peace. I want the right to have a personal relationship, please.” Those last statements, again, I would ask the court to entirely disregard.

            So we are left, your Honour, with a claim for damages back to 1978 for the claimant herself.  That, I would submit, is the only part of the statement of claim that has any possible merit in it at all.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Am I not right in thinking – amongst all this – I have read quite a bit of this stuff but not since the week before last – but am I not right in thinking that one of our Deputy District Judges struck something out along the same lines?

MR. FISHER: That is absolutely right, your Honour, and that is one of the grounds on which I make the application now, to strike out.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Thank you. You can see why I am slightly confused about this?

MR. FISHER: Yes, perhaps it would help if I gave you a little chronology.

JUDGE MITCHELL:   No, you carry on.  Yes, it might actually. Yes, if you would. As I say, I have read this but it is difficult to get a thread.

MR. FISHER: I have prepared a chronology just so that I can get my own head around what has been happening, your Honour, the 15^th July 1978 the parties married. On the 5^th August 1980 Miss Lindridge alleges that a non-molestation order was made against the defendant. It may be that Mr. Peck cannot say anything about that, but he knows that an order was made at some point around that time, which he did not oppose, but there were no further proceedings in relation to that.  In August 1980, until September 1980, Miss Lindridge alleges that the defendant stalked and terrorised her.  Mr. Peck denies that absolutely. Mr. Peck claims not to have any contact from the claimant from that time onwards, 1980, right up until October 2001. The decree absolute was obtained on the 11^th February 1982. So some four years after they married and two years after the allegations were made.

            Then there is a gap, your Honour, of nineteen years, or thereabouts, until the 17^th October 2001 when claim number MS102915 was issued in this Court.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  What was that about?

MR. FISHER: That was very much along the same lines as the present proceedings. The actual claim was compensation required by the claimant for injuries, losses sustained by the claimant as a consequence of actions by the defendant. “Please can the court freeze the defendant’s current and future assets.” That was accompanied by a statement which is almost exactly along the same lines as that which was filed in these proceedings. It runs to about five or six pages.

            A defence was filed and an application was - - - -

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Is she making allegations like – in 1987 – she obviously was attacked in a house but she is trying to claim that this man is responsible in some way for putting him up to it, I think. That is one of the things she keeps coming back to.

MR. FISHER: 1987?

JUDGE MITCHELL:  I think it is 1987.

MR. FISHER: I am not aware of any particular allegations around that time.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  I think she was probably genuinely assaulted in some way, or there were people round the house, you know. It is probably a real incident, but there is absolutely no evidence that Mr. Peck had anything to do with it at all. But what she seems to be trying to do is say that it is all down to him.

MR. FISHER: Quite, yes, I think that there is some suggestion that she was raped at some point before she met the defendant in 1975.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  In 1975 I think it was, when she was at Portsmouth University.

MR. FISHER: Yes, and then there was another incident in Bermuda, which is coming back to me.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Yes, apparently, yes, one of the District Judges remembers that one.

MR. FISHER: But, again, there is no link at all with my client.  Your Honour, an application was made to strike out and that was considered on paper by District Judge Millward on the 31st October. The order was drawn on the 2^nd November.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Who won?

MR. FISHER: I do beg your pardon?

JUDGE MITCHELL:  That was 2.10.01.

MR. FISHER:  Yes, 31^st October 2001, yes. That the claim be struck out as disclosing no cause of action. The claimant do pay the defendant’s costs to be assessed if not agreed. Before anything further could be done in relation to that an application was made by the claimant to set aside that decision. It was an order made in her absence, on paper, and she was entitled to apply to set it aside, which she did, and the Court rightly listed it for a hearing, very promptly, on the 3^rd January 2002.

            At that hearing, which was before Deputy District Judge Beach, I represented the defendant and Mrs. Lindridge was in person. Having heard arguments, principally based on a Limitation point, that the only allegations dated back far too long ago, the application was dismissed and Mrs. Lindridge was ordered to pay Mr. Peck’s costs assessed fairly modestly, I would have to say, at £1,000. In fact only £200 of those has ever been paid and that is another ground for alleging that this is an abuse of the process because the costs of the last action have not been settled.

JUDGE MITCHELL:  That is a good argument I think.

MR. FISHER: There was another gap then until the end of last year when my firm received an un-sealed witness summons. We were one of the recipients. One of my partners - - - -

JUDGE MITCHELL:  Yes, I noticed that.