王寬裕 v. 高等法院原訟法庭法官楊家雄

HCAL 2347/2023

[2024] HKCFI 305

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW LIST NO 2347 OF 2023

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D E C I S I O N

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1.This application is fundamentally misconceived, and stands to be dismissed.

2.By Form 86 dated the 7 December 2023, the Applicant seeks leave to apply for judicial review to challenge the decision of Keith Yeung J, made in previous judicial review proceedings, namely HCAL 1465/2023. That decision is recorded in Keith Yeung J’s Judgment and Order dated 6 (and 7) September 2023.

3.By that decision, Keith Yeung J dismissed the Applicant’s previous application for leave to apply for judicial review, with no order as to costs.

4.The relief sought by the Applicant in these proceedings includes an order to rescind the previous decision of Keith Yeung J in HCAL 1465/2023. The relief claimed in these proceedings also in effect seeks an order along the lines of that previously sought from Keith Yeung J, but which was refused in the previous proceedings.

5.In his written materials, and in his oral submissions this morning, the Applicant has sought to explain the basis of his intended challenge. I think that basis can broadly be summarised as follows. Keith Yeung J failed properly to understand and to take into consideration the full facts and information upon which the Applicant relied in the previous proceedings. He did so because, or possibly because, of an inability to understand simplifies Chinese characters rather than traditional Chinese characters. The Applicant says this problem has been identified because Keith Yeung J’s clerk appeared unable to read simplified characters, which is why one of the claims to relief in these proceedings is that the Judge should have an extra helper who is able to read simplified characters.

6.The underlying matter relating to the previous proceedings arose from the Applicant’s concerned that he had been refused entry to a Jockey Club betting centre, and the failure to obtain from the Legal aid Department the grant of legal aid to pursue proceedings in that regard. The Applicant says that there were materials exhibited and/or attached to his previous application which demonstrated the merits in his underlying complaint and his further complaint about the refusal of legal aid. The Applicant says that, if Keith Yeung J had understood those materials, he would have understood that a refusal of legal aid was not right or lawful. The Applicant further says that Keith Yeung J would have made more reference to the underlying information and materials than he actually did in the judgment which he gave.

7.However these matters are put, including by reference to a suggestion that there has been some form of language discrimination, the complaint which the Applicant makes in these proceedings is essentially that – for the various reasons I have tried to summarise – Keith Yeung J fell into error in making his previous decision in HCAL 1465/2023.

8.However, if the Applicant was dissatisfied with the decision of Keith Yeung J, his remedy was to seek to pursue an appeal. His potential remedy does not lie in asking a further and different Court exercising its judicial review jurisdiction to overturn the earlier decision, and to grant him relief along the lines of that previously sought in the previous proceedings. In short, the previous decision of Keith Yeung J is not amenable to judicial review.

9.There was, in any event, the available alternative remedy of an appeal. The previous decision does not become amenable to judicial review simply because of a reference to the Bill of Rights, and the suggestion that Keith Yeung J”s decision was the result of bias, or prejudice, or discrimination of the sort I have summarised.

10.I note that the Applicant also seeks in these proceedings approval of his legal aid application, which he asks for in advance of “the oral hearing”. It is on that basis of the reference to an oral hearing that I fixed today’s oral hearing of the application for leave to apply for judicial review.

11.In a letter written to the Court on 15 January 2024, the Applicant suggested that he would deal separately in another application for leave to apply for judicial review relating to his legal aid application dated 21 November 2023, and I make no comment in that regard.

12.However, for present purposes, it suffices to say that this Court exercising its judicial review jurisdiction does not act as an appellate court from a decision of the Director of Legal Aid refusing the grant of legal aid.

13.In the circumstances, this application does not raise any reasonably arguable grounds of review with any reasonable prospect of success.

14.I also note in passing that the intended challenges to a decision dated 6 September 2023, and that the Form 86 is dated 27 December 2023, which is more than three months after the date of the earlier decision the intended subject of challenge.

15.The applicant is offered an explanation for that and, on its own, I do not think that the fact that the application was issued after the end of the long stop period provided by the rules would have been necessarily fatal.

16.But, for the reasons I have identified, this application for leave to apply for judicial review is dismissed. I make no order as to costs.

The applicant, acting in person