Re Victoria District Court

HCMP000057/1968

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG

APPELLATE JURISDICTION

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG

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Coram: Full Court (Hogan, C.J. & Rigby, S.P.J.)

Date of Judgment: 9 May 1968

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TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL JUDGMENT

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1. This is an application for an extension of time in which to appeal against a judgment pronounced on the 30th December, 1967 in the Victoria District Court in Workmen's Compensation Case No.111 of 1966. The application, which is signed in the Chinese language by the applicant, is dated the 7th March. There is no clear indication on that application as to why the appeal which the appellant seeks to make was not filed within the prescribed period of 30 days, and no affidavit or other evidence has been produced in support of the application indicating whether there was or was not adequate justification for the delay.

2. If, on the face of it, this appeared to be an appeal with some merits one would feel reluctant, when dealing with an applicant who was not familiar with the English language, who has not the benefit of legal assistance and who, as in the case of the present applicant, appears to be a stranger to this territory, to dismiss the application unless one were satisfied that the failure to comply with the requirement as to time was due to indifference or negligence on the applicant's part.

3. We have endeavoured to ascertain from the applicant herself why her appeal was not filed within the prescribed time but her answers to us on this point have been extremely evasive and we have not really been able to ascertain what we could regard as the true reasons for the delay. She has apparently had some help in preparing her application, but the precise nature of that help was not clearly disclosed. In so far as this aspect of the application is concerned, we would have been in a position to deal with it more readily if there was some clear indication that the applicant was in fact aware of the 30-day limitation and, indeed, if a party is unrepresented, it would, we think, be desirable when delivering a decision under the Workmen's Compensation Ordinance to indicate that there is a time limit for appeals against such decision. It would also be helpful if a note of that intimation is made on the record.

4. In the circumstances of this case we would not wish to rest our decision purely on the question whether the time which elapsed before the filing of the application had been satisfactorily accounted for, and we have looked at the merits of the appeal which the applicant is seeking to file.

5. It is apparent from the record of the proceedings in the Court below that the evidence tendered on behalf of the applicant to the Judge was of an extremely contradictory and indeed unsatisfactory nature. From this evidence it was difficult to establish with any adequate degree of certainty and satisfaction precisely what sums were being remitted by the deceased and precisely to whom they were being remitted in mainland China. The precise degree of dependency, if any, between the applicant and the deceased was also obscure. In the difficult situation thus created, and created by the nature of the evidence adduced by the applicant, we think that the Judge came to a decision which did justice to the applicant's case as presented to him, and we see little reason for thinking that if this appeal was allowed to go forward there would be any prospect of it being successful. Indeed, we think that it would be doing a disservice to the applicant to extend the time and allow this appeal to go forward because that would probably involve her in costs if, as seems very likely, it is ultimately dismissed.

6. In all the circumstances we have come to the conclusion that it would not be right to allow the extension of time and the application is accordingly dismissed.

(No order as to costs)

9th May, 1968.

Representation:

...(illegible)