Case Name: In the matter of Landau Date 13/03/97 Division Crown Case No CO-4321-96 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE No. CO 4321 of 1996 QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION Court No. 7 The Royal Courts of Justice The Strand LONDON EC4 13th March 1997 Before: BROOKE LJ BLOFELD J ____________________ HM ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Applicants) -v- IVAN AUBREY LANDAU (Respondent) ____________________ MR G SANKEY QC, instructed by the Treasury Solicitor, appeared on behalf of the Applicants. MR R DEACON, instructed by Messrs Landau & Cohen, appeared on behalf of the Respondent LORD JUSTICE BROOKE: This is an application made on behalf of the Attorney- General by leave of this court granted on 24th January 1997 for an order that the respondent Ivan Aubrey Landau be committed to prison for deliberately disobeying an All Proceedings Order made against him by this court on 11th May 1992 under Section 42 of the Supreme Court Act 1981. The respondent admits the facts on which the Attorney-General relies and we have granted leave to the Attorney-General to amend the notice of motion in order to set out the particular facts on which he relies in a schedule to the amended notice of motion. Although they are not yet set out in the notice of motion before us, those facts are conveniently set out in a skeleton argument which has been lodged with the court by Mr Sankey, and the underlying evidence is fully set out in the various affidavits sworn on behalf of the Attorney-General, all of which were served on the respondent. The first matters relied on relate to proceedings in the Family Division in connection with the estate of Minnie Landau, the respondent's mother. The respondent's daughter Julia lives in South Africa, and four applications, one interlocutory appeal and one subpoena duces tecum were issued on her behalf in the respondent's handwriting between April 1995 and March 1996. On two occasions he purported to be acting under Power of Attorney for his daughter. Then there are proceedings which the respondent issued in his daughter's name in the Edmonton County Court on 26th April 1995. On this occasion he used the alias Ian Carriage. In those proceedings the respondent issued a witness summons addressed to the Attorney-General, an application to strike out an application by the defendants to strike out the proceedings and an application to lift the stay of the action. On one of these occasions he used the same alias Ian Carriage and purported to act under Power of Attorney for his daughter. On another he signed himself "Ivan A Landau, aka Ian Carriage, Attorney under Power". Next there were proceedings issued in the Edmonton County Court in 1995 against Lloyd's Bank and three others, including a High Court judge. The respondent issued these proceedings in the name of Ian Carriage and in the same name he issued another witness summons addressed to the Attorney-General and made an application to set aside an order that the action be stayed. Then there is a claim made in his daughter's name against the Chief Land Registrar in the Central London County Court issued on 31st July 1995. The respondent wrote out the summons and his wife signed it purporting to act as her daughter's attorney. Five weeks later the respondent issued another summons, this time in the name of his son-in-law Keith Adams, who lives in South Africa, in the Edmonton County Court. This was followed, on the following day, by a summons issued in the same court in his daughter's name against another member of the Landau family for damages for breach of duty as an executor. In those proceedings he issued three applications; two for witness summonses and one for committal. On each occasion he purported to act for his daughter under Power of Attorney. On 13th May 1996 a letter was written on behalf of the Attorney-General drawing most of these matters to the respondent's attention and warning him very clearly that if he did not abide by the terms of the order of this court made in May 1992 the Attorney-General would consider issuing proceedings against him for contempt of court. Notwithstanding this warning the respondent continued to act in breach of the order. On 15th May 1996 he issued proceedings in the Shoreditch County Court in the name of his daughter, signed "Ian Carriage, Plaintiff's Attorney". He issued an application for a witness summons on his daughter's behalf in those proceedings. A fortnight later he issued a summons in his daughter's name in the Central London County Court. He later applied on behalf of his daughter to set aside an order striking out the action and issued a witness summons in those proceedings. There followed two notices of appeal issued by the respondent purporting to act on behalf of his daughter against orders setting aside statutory demands issued against third parties, and a similar notice of motion in his own name. Even after the first two affidavits were sworn on behalf of the Attorney-General in these proceedings the respondent continued to issue proceedings or make applications in civil proceedings in breach of the order dated 11th May 1992. For example, after these proceedings were served on him on 6th February 1997 the respondent issued proceedings in the Clerkenwell County Court in his daughter's name against the judges of this court who granted leave on 24th January 1997. He also purported to make a counterclaim in these proceedings which constitute the institution of proceedings in breach of the May 1992 order. None of these very recent matters are relied on, of course, in support of the present application to commit. It is probably kinder to cast a veil over the documents with which the respondent bombarded this court after these proceedings were served on him. Mr Deacon has told the Court today that he does not wish the court to pay any regard to any of those documents. During the last week the respondent has instructed solicitors to act on his behalf, and he has sworn an affidavit on Tuesday of this week making it clear he does not dispute any of the factual matters set out in the evidence before the court and accepting with regret that these matters may well have amounted to contempt of this court on his part. In his affidavit the respondent makes two points and sets out his intentions for the future. He also seeks to explain his behaviour and to apologise for what he has done. The first point he made was supported by an affidavit sworn by his daughter in Cape Town two days ago; that along with his wife he was indeed granted a Power of Attorney by her on 27th October 1994 to act on her behalf to protect her interests in respect of her grandmother's estate and to take whatever action they might deem necessary to do so. His daughter is a teacher in a school which is a charitable organisation for children with special needs. She has two young children, and virtually no money to conduct litigation in respect of the estate. The respondent says that he did not understand or believe that in acting for his daughter under this Power of Attorney he or his wife, against whom a Section 42 order has also been made, would be in breach of the order made in May 1992. So far as this matter is concerned he has advised his daughter to apply for legal aid and appoint an independent solicitor. She is now doing that. Mr Deacon on his behalf has told us that his client had no intention in any way of acting for his daughter in future. At this stage it is appropriate to mention a clear statement made by Knox J in the Chancery Division on 2nd March 1995, almost at the start of the avalanche of proceedings and applications which the applicant instituted, in which he said this: "Thirdly, I have seen what, on the face of it, is a document upon which Mr Ivan Landau relies as giving him authority to act on Julia Michelle Landau-Adams' behalf. It purports to be a Power of Attorney. I am very far from satisfied that on its true construction it goes far enough to authorise him to bring proper proceedings, let alone misconceived ones on her behalf." The second point the respondent makes in his affidavit is that he is now 68 years of age and in failing health. In addition to other ailments he suffers from severe angina and blood pressure and he has produced a doctor's letter that supports what he says. He feels that everything is now getting on top of him and he finds it difficult to sleep. He describes all the work he does to help his wife, who is 72 years old and also very ill. He was qualified as a solicitor in 1954 but he ceased to practise in 1986. His practice was non-litigous and it was not part of his daily routine to be involved in litigation. He wishes to make it clear that his attitude has now changed and through his counsel today the same message to the court has been reinforced. He says he does not intend to serve any more statutory demands, and I should say that this court granted permanent injunction against him in the exercise of its inherent jurisdiction to stop him issuing any more statutory demands, either by himself or through agents of his, when this matter was last before the court. He has also said that he does not intend to conduct himself in a way which has brought this application about. He said in his affidavit that what he did was by desire to do what he considered to be in the best interests of his daughter and her family. He apologises for any breach of the court order he may have committed and for any distress those breaches may have caused. He tells the court that he is now desperately concerned about the possibility of incarceration. Mr Sankey, on behalf of the Attorney-General, has submitted that the court should receive these indications of intention with a fair measure of scepticism, and he has drawn to the attention of the court the undertakings that were given when the application for a Section 42 order was made against his wife in support of an application to adjourn those proceedings on 20th January 1994. The letters the respondent wrote to the representative of the Treasury Solicitor and to the Crown Office when he left court that day complained that what had been done in court was being done under duress, and they made various other complaints about the unjust way in which he was treated. Mr Deacon wisely recognises the force which lies behind the Attorney-General's scepticism, but he submits that, given his client's age and ill health and the dependence of his ill wife on his client, and the fact that at this almost twelfth hour his client has, at any rate on the face of it, executed a vault force in place of the obstinate attitude that he has been displaying throughout the period to which the evidence in this court relates, the interests of justice would not necessarily be served by committing Mr Landau immediately to prison. I take into account the fact that this is the first occasion on which a motion seeking his committal to prison has come before the court, and the first occasion on which he has heard the clank of the prison gates as something which is likely to occur to him in the very near future. These are serious contempts of court. They are made the more serious because Mr Landau is a solicitor and he must realise that they are serious contempts of court, and that if he was not so old and so ill with an ill wife dependent on him, the likelihood is that the court would unquestionably send him to prison for these serious contempts. It is those considerations and those considerations alone which, in my judgment, are sufficient to dissuade the court from making an immediate order today. In my judgment, the appropriate order of the court is to make an order that he be committed to prison for three months for the contempts complained of, but that that order be suspended so long as he complies with the order of this court in the All Proceedings Order which was made on 11th May 1992. This means that if in any way he breaches that All Proceedings Order either by instituting proceedings -- and it has now been carefully explained to him that instituting proceedings by way of an alias, instituting proceedings in somebody else's name and instituting proceedings under Power of Attorney all amount to instituting proceedings in breach of the order -- if in any way he institutes proceedings, or if in any way he issues applications in civil proceedings -- and that relates not only to any new proceedings but also to the proceedings which have already been instituted -- then, if the breach is proved to the court's satisfaction, this order for committal to prison which we make today will be immediately put into effect. He also needs to understand that if he issues statutory demands in any way in breach of the order of this court, which was made on 24th January 1997, the Attorney-General is very likely to come immediately to this court to seek his committal to prison for breach of that order and in that case the punishment would be at large. It would not simply be a matter of activating a three month suspended sentence. Punishment would be at large and I would be very surprised if this court were to consider that a sentence of less than 12 months imprisonment was appropriate. The upshot is, in my judgment, that it would be appropriate for this court to accede to the submissions made on Mr Landau's behalf by Mr Deacon today for which the court is indebted. So far as the order on the application for committal is concerned it should be an order along the lines that I have indicated. In addition, the respondent should pay the applicant's costs of these proceedings to be taxed on an indemnity basis. MR JUSTICE BLOFELD: I have found this a difficult and troublesome case. For a long time I was persuaded this was a case where it was necessary in the interests of justice to commit this respondent forthwith because his breaches have been so many and so persistent, but in the end I have been persuaded, for the reasons given by my Lord, that it is proper to make a suspended committal order in the terms that my Lord has set out. Consequently, I agree. LORD JUSTICE BROOKE: Our order is made open-ended. It is not suspended for a finite period of years.