RE JASVIR SINGH AND OTHERS

CAMP 88/2020

[2021] HKCA 840

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

MISCELLANEOUS PROCEEDINGS NO 88 OF 2020

(ON AN INTENDED APPEAL FROM HCAL NO 871 OF 2018)

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J U D G M E N T

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Hon Au JA (giving the Judgment of the Court):

1.  On 5 February 2021, the 2^nd applicant on behalf of the 3^rd applicant and herself filed a Notice of Motion to apply for leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal against this Court (Lam VP and Au JA)’s judgment of 14 January 2021 (“the Judgment”) [2021] HKCA 53.  In the Judgment, we refused to grant extension of time to the applicants to appeal the decision of Deputy High Court Judge Bruno Chan on 18 November 2019, refusing to grant them leave to apply for judicial review.

2.  The facts and issues in the appeal, as well as the Court’s reasons for dismissing it, are set out in the Judgment.  We will not repeat them here.  After reviewing the Notice of Motion, we see no reason to deviate from the usual practice to consider this application on paper pursuant to paragraph 3 of Practice Direction 2.1.

3.  Under section 22(1)(b) of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal Ordinance (Cap 484), leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal will only be granted if the question involved in the appeal is one which, by reason of its great general or public importance, or otherwise, ought to be submitted to the Court of Final Appeal for decision.

4.  In the Notice of Motion, the 2^nd applicant raised the following grounds of appeal: (a) the authorities, despite knowing her language incapability, did not facilitate her understandings of the decisions, which deprived her the right to seek further avenues of appeal; (b) she requested the judgment to be read to her or she should be given reasonable time to respond; and (c) she also complained that the 3^rd applicant’s claim was not properly dealt with.

5.  In their written submissions of 15 March 2021, the 2^nd applicant explained that she did not receive the directions of the Registrar of Civil Appeals directed that, among others, the applicants do file their written submissions on or before 19 February 2021, and thus she was late in lodging the written submissions.  While we do not accept that this is a cogent explanation for a delay of almost a month, we will take into account these submissions for the present purpose.  We note that the arguments in the written submissions repeated verbatim those in the Notice of Motion.  For the following reasons, we reject these arguments.

6.  In our view, the applicants’ application is entirely without merits.  The 2^nd applicant’s argument on the lack of language assistance was advanced before this Court and we rejected it with reasons at [26] of the Judgment.  We had also given the reasons as to why we refused to grant extension of time to the 2^nd applicant at [23] - [27] of the Judgment.  The 2^nd applicant fails to identify any specific errors in the Judgment.

7.  Further, contrary to what the 2^nd applicant has submitted, we had separately considered the 3^rd applicant’s application.  We were of the view that his claim was properly dealt with by the Board and his intended appeal also had no merits.  Thus, we also refused to grant extension of time to the 3^rd applicant (see [35] - [39]).  Other than making general and bare assertions, the applicants failed to identify any specific errors in our reasons in this aspect.  There are therefore no viable grounds of appeal against the Judgment.

8.  In the circumstances and in any event, we also do not consider that there are any questions of great general or public importance or which otherwise ought to be submitted to the CFA for determination.

9.  For these reasons, we refuse to grant leave to appeal to the CFA, and dismiss the applicants’ Notice of Motion.