A judge overseeing what developed into a rancorous court battle between a litigant in person and solicitor has admonished the pair for 'frankly appalling' conduct. His Honour Judge Farquhar said Ian Grace and solicitor Paul Gardner, who was representing Grace's ex-wife, adopted language and an approach that had no place in financial remedy proceedings.
Both had to be warned at the start of the hearing to curtail their language after Gardner had previously referred to Ian Grace in court as a ‘sociopath’ and ‘like a mongrel with a rotten bone in his mouth’.
In Grace v Grace the court heard that, at a previous hearing, both parties were criticised for an ‘acrimonious, protracted and difficult' litigation. The judge in that hearing made an order for wasted costs against Gardner in the sum of £1,250 and a further £200 in relation to a second application after finding he had breached certain family procedure rules.
Ian Grace’s central complaint now was that Gardner had failed to draft the original financial order correctly and failed to comply with family procedure rules. He accused Gardner of conceiving a plan ‘to effectively waste court proceedings in pursuit of an improper purpose which was to gain control of my legal estate by deception and by misleading the court’. The judge accepted the final financial order and draft order were different but said Gardner's changes were 'totally inconsequential' and had no impact on the final order.
Grace made further complaints about Gardner’s alleged breaches, including failures to comply with orders and to provide a bundle in time. Farquhar said the reality was there will be breaches of some rules in many cases, but the question was the impact of those breaches. ‘The court does not encourage any such breaches, but the touchstone must always be the overriding objective,’ said the judge. ‘I am satisfied that none of the breaches of the rules have led to an unfair final hearing and that no further orders or sanctions need to be made in relation to those breaches.’
Farquhar ruled that Grace should pay £20,000 towards his ex-wife’s costs after a ‘wholly unreasonable, disproportionate and inappropriate’ litigation. Grace claimed to have spent 3,000 hours preparing for the case, at a cost of £173,355 in fees and lost earnings.
The parties had reached agreement on the resolution of financial remedy proceedings in April 2022. Since then, Grace's ex-wife accused him of having ‘hijacked’ proceedings by issuing more than 20 applications and ‘bombarding everyone and anyone with emails’. The Brighton Family Court has received more than 850 emails relating to this case and her costs went from around £28,000 to £90,000.
Due to what he described as ‘significant litigation misconduct’, the judge lifted the anonymity of the parties, adding: ‘The perpetual onslaught perpetrated by Mr Grace is so far beyond what could possibly be considered acceptable that this case clearly calls for the parties to be named.’
The financial remedy agreement was approved by the court.
