RE AKTER RUKSANA

CACV 329/2020

[2021] HKCA 1425

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CIVIL APPEAL NO 329 OF 2020

(ON APPEAL FROM HCAL NO 1475 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 21 May 2021, the applicant filed a Notice of Motion to apply for leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal against this Court’s (Au JA and Coleman J) judgment of 9 April 2021 (“the Judgment”) [2021] HKCA 483. In the Judgment, we dismissed the applicant’s appeal against the decision of Deputy High Court Judge Bruno Chan dated 28 July 2020, refusing her 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.  Section 22(1)(b) of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal Ordinance (Cap 484) (“the HKCFAO”) provides that an appeal shall lie to the Court of Final Appeal (“CFA”) at the discretion of this Court or the CFA 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 CFA for decision.

4.  Further, pursuant to section 24(2) of the HKCFAO, the application should be made within 28 days from the date of the judgment to be appealed from. Thus, the deadline for filing the present application expired on 7 May 2021. The applicant is therefore around two weeks out of time.

5.  As the applicant did not apply for leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal within time, the court has a discretion to extend time under section 24(5) of the HKCFAO only if good and sufficient grounds are shown by the applicants. In deciding whether there are such good grounds, the court is entitled to take into account (a) the length of the delay; (b) the reasons for the delay; (c) the chances of the appeal succeeding if an extension of time is granted; and (d) the degree of prejudice to the respondent if the application is granted: Begum Jahanara v Ian Candy, Esq [2021] HKCA 83, per Lam VP at [4] and the authorities cited therein.

6.  In her Notice of Motion, the applicant simply stated that the decision makers wrongly assessed the country of origin information and that the decisions were unfair. In her supporting affirmation filed on the same date, she claimed that she did not receive the Judgment. In her written submissions of 2 July 2021, she repeated those submitted in her written submissions filed before us: see [13] of the Judgment. Other than that, she did not identify any errors with sufficient particularities in the Judgment.

7.  The arguments in her written submissions were dealt with and rejected by us with reasons at [21] of the Judgment. In the premises, the applicant has not raised any viable grounds of appeal.

8.  We also do not consider that there is any question of great general or public importance or which otherwise ought to be submitted to the CFA for determination.

9.  For these reasons, it would be futile to extend time.  We therefore refuse to grant leave to appeal to the CFA out of time, and dismiss the application.