Re Sharma Poonam

CACV 114/2019

[2019] HKCA 1173

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CIVIL APPEAL NO 114 OF 2019

(ON APPEAL FROM HCAL 747/2018)

________________________

__________________________

________________________

JUDGMENT

________________________

Hon Lam VP (giving the Judgment of the Court):

1.On 19 July 2019, the Court (Lam Ag CJHC and Andrew Chan J) handed down a judgment ([2019] HKCA 804) dismissing the applicant’s appeal against the decision of Deputy High Court Judge K W Lung (“the Judge”) dated 25 February 2019. In the latter decision, the Judge refused leave for the applicant to apply for judicial review.

2.By a notice of motion filed on 2 August 2019, the applicant sought leave to appeal against the Court’s judgment to the Court of Final Appeal.  She also lodged written submissions on 16 August 2019 to support her application.

3.Notwithstanding the request of the applicant, we do not see any reason to depart from the usual practice of determining applications for leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal on paper without an oral hearing, see: Practice Direction 2.1, paragraph 3.

4.Most of the grounds of appeal and her written submissions regurgitate the arguments advanced by her in the appeal.  The Court has already considered and addressed those issues (which focused on the lack of language assistance) in [16] – [19] of the judgment.  We have also addressed the issue concerning the COI materials at [20] thereof. 

5.In the motion, the applicant raised the issue of legal assistance which she did not rely upon in the appeal.  In light of that, she cannot complain about the lack of reference to it in the judgment of 19 July 2019.

6.In any event, the issue of legal assistance had been adequately dealt with by the Judge at [16] of the Form CALL-1 ([2019] HKCFI 404).  We do not find anything amiss in the Judge’s analysis.

7.Having read all the documents of the applicant, we cannot find any reasonably arguable grounds of appeal.  

8.Further, the matters stated in the notice of motion and the written submissions raised no question of great general or public importance, as required under section 22(1)(b) of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal Ordinance (Cap 484).  We cannot find any basis for leave to be granted on the “otherwise” limb.  Accordingly, the statutory thresholds for granting leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal are not met.

9.For these reasons, we refuse to grant leave to the applicant to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal.  We dismiss the notice of motion accordingly.

The applicant acting in person