Litigants in person: part 3

After the site visit referred to in last week's QC blog, everyone travelled back to the court where the case was opened by Counsel for the local authority and then the evidence was called. The evidence for the local authority (the party applying for the closure order, who had instructed the barrister through their in-house legal department and for whom an in-house solicitor was attending with the barrister) proceeded relatively quickly. This was apart from one problem. At the end of the first day the defendant said that the next day was a religious festival and therefore he could not attend court on the following day. He specified the religious festival. It was not one which the barrister had ever heard of. Nor had the judge. However the litigant said it was a festival and it was important for him and therefore the court did not sit on Tuesday and was scheduled to recommence on the Wednesday and continue sitting for the rest of the week.

The barrister consulted one of his Jewish colleagues in the interim about this religious festival that he had never heard of. What surprised him was that, notwithstanding having a number of observant Orthodox Jews in his chambers, none of them had ever seen fit to miss a day's work for this festival even though they would always take off the main festivals which were those that they needed to observe. He asked one of them and was told the festival the litigant had named was indeed a genuine festival but it was not one that required no work to be undertaken on the day. Someone who was devout might well want to observe and attend this festival but it would not be contrary to his faith to miss it The colleague explained this in a way that the barrister given his background would be able to follow. A Catholic could celebrate any number of Saints days, and indeed it would be possible to fill the calendar with those days, but it was not required that a person did no work in order to observe the same, and however devout the Catholic was, it was simply not right to suggest that attendance for all such festivals was required. There might well be some festivals that the Catholic would particularly want to attend, but it could not be said that he was obliged to do so.

At the conclusion of the Wednesday the litigant in person then said that there was another religious festival on the Thursday so he could not come. At this rate of course there was a real risk that the trial would not be finished within the allotted timetable. Although reluctant to interfere with someone's religious observance, the barrister took the view that if attendance was not absolutely necessary, complying with the trial timetable was more important. In the event it was not necessary to spend much time on this. The judge had obviously been doing some digging of his own about religious festivals, so he already had a view. (Presumably from consulting other judges in the same way the barrister had). There was also another aspect to this. If it was so important, the judge wanted to know why nothing had been mentioned of this festival on the Monday when it was decided that the court would sit for the rest of the week. After some to-ing and fro-ing the litigant eventually conceded that he could attend on the following day without failing to comply with his religious obligations, even though it was a festival that he did very much want to observe.

Things then started to liven up in the proceedings as we shall see next week.