Its always a pleasure to go to the Court of Appeal. The judges are bright, focused and polite. The work is interesting. And the cases which are decided there, add incrementally to the store of binding precedents, which raise the law slightly higher each year, like a metaphorical legal coral reef.
Last week judgment was handed down in a case, where I succeeded in overturning findings of fraud made by HH Judge Baucher in conjoined claims in the case of Da Costa and another v Sargaco and another [2016] EWCA Civ 764. The case still failed for want of proof but the issue of the modest damages at stake was not what warranted a trip to the Court of Appeal.
The case is interesting both for the way the Court of Appeal dealt with the issue of fraud, but also due to the criticism placed on the judge below, for wrongly excluding from court one of the claimants in the case, whilst the other was giving evidence. A copy of the judgment can be found here: Da Costa and another v Sargaco and another [2016] EWCA Civ 764