Re Pimentel, Norberto Nisperos

CACV 350/2019

[2020] HKCA 405

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CIVIL APPEAL NO 350 OF 2019

(ON APPEAL FROM HCAL 1818/2018)

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Before: Hon Lam VP, Lisa Wong and S T Poon JJ in Court

Date of Written Submissions:  30 December 2019

Date of Judgment:  4 June 2020

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JUDGMENT

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

1.By a judgment dated 2 December 2019 [2019] HKCA 1331, this Court (Lam VP, Lisa Wong and ST Poon JJ) dismissed the applicant’s appeal against the decision of Deputy High Court Judge K W Lung [2019] HKCFI 1798 refusing leave to apply for judicial review.

2.By a notice of motion dated 19 December 2019, the applicant applied for leave to appeal against the judgment to the Court of Final Appeal. In the notice, the applicant set out the following ground of appeal:

“ I would like to infomr the Honourable Court that there is some error in law in my decision. Decision maker just relied on COL information and my previous facts which were in favor while rejecting my claim. Acual life occur different situation then what is mentioned in the COL Information. The Officer and cours prefers to ignore the overwhelming of the evidence of this violence towards minorities searching for unrealistic silver lining. The Decision is betrary a bias and formula approach unlikely fairly access the danger of my life and clearly not reasonable.” [sic]

3.In compliance with the directions given by the Registrar of Civil Appeals, the applicant lodged his written submission on 30 December 2019.  The first part (ie, [1] – [4]) of the skeleton submission was the same as the one lodged by the applicant for the appeal.  The applicant submitted in the second half that (a) the adjudicator acted in a procedurally unfair manner, (b) the decision could be set aside as it is Wednesbury unreasonable, and (c) the Board should take account of section 37ZT of the Immigration Ordinance Cap 115 for late filing of notice of appeal.

4.In our view, the intended appeal is devoid of merits.

5.First of all, as we explained at [14] – [19] of the judgment, the appeal was dismissed on the ground that no viable ground was advanced to reverse the Judge’s decision.   We have particularly mentioned at [17] that the legal authorities referred to in his skeleton submission could not avail him in the appeal.  In this application, the applicant failed to engage with our reasons in dismissing his appeal.  He did not identify any arguable ground that warrants the submission of the matter to the Court of Final Appeal for determination. 

6.Second, the general assertions in the second part of his skeleton submission cannot avail him in the appeal.  We cannot discern any relevance of section 37ZT as this is not a case where the Board declined to entertain an appeal to it because it was brought out of time.

7.Moreover, the matters raised by the applicant in the notice of motion or in his skeleton submission do not involve any question of great general or public importance such that it ought to be submitted to the Court of Final Appeal for decision.  Nor do we see any basis to grant leave on the “otherwise” limb.  The statutory threshold for granting leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal under section 22(1)(b) of the Court of Final Appeal Ordinance are not satisfied.

8.Accordingly, we refuse to give the applicant leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal and dismiss his notice of motion.

The applicant acting in person