莊裕安 v. 終審法院

CACV 552/2019

[2021] HKCA 102

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CIVIL APPEAL NO 552 OF 2019

(ON APPEAL FROM HCAL 2941/2019)

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J U D G M E N T

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Hon Lam VP (giving the Judgment of the Court):

1.  After we handed down our judgment in this appeal on 27 November 2020, Mr Chong applied by a notice of motion of 4 December 2020 (“First Motion”) for leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal. He also lodged written submissions on 18 December 2020 in support of the application.

2.  In the meantime, Mr Chong filed another notice of motion on 17 December 2020 (“Second Motion”) seeking the same relief.

3.  Neither the First Motion nor the Second Motion sets out any question of great general or public importance to be submitted to the Court of Final Appeal for determination.  These documents do not comply with the requirement in para 2 of Practice Direction 2.1.

4.  Neither did Mr Chong formulate any proper questions for determination in his written submissions. 

5.  The First Motion is basically a document containing submissions which fail to engage with the reasoning in our judgment.  The Second Motion only serves the purpose of attaching a bundle of documents which, as far as we can see, could not take the application of Mr Chong further in terms of meeting the requirement under Section 22(1)(b) of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal Ordinance Cap 484 (“the Ordinance”).

6.  In essence, we dismissed Mr Chong’s appeal because, in accordance with well-established legal principle, a decision of the Appeal Committee is not amenable to judicial review.  Mr Chong’s submissions, be it in his First Motion or his written submissions, simply ignored such fatal defect in his appeal.

7.  In the circumstances, we are not satisfied that there is any proper basis for leave to be granted under Section 22(1)(b) of the Ordinance.

8.  Given the obvious lack of merit, we do not see any reason to depart from the usual practice as stated in para 3 of Practice Direction 2.1 (grounded upon Order 59 Rule 14A: see Ng Yat Chi v China Resources (Holdings) Company Ltd CACV 263/2005, 27 July 2016) that application for leave is to be processed without any oral hearing.  We therefore decline to accede to Mr Chong’s request for oral hearing.

9.  For these reasons, the First Motion and the Second Motion are dismissed.