HKSAR v. LI CHUN MING

CACC 32/2003

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 32 OF 2003

(ON APPEAL FROM HCCC NO. 80 OF 2002)

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D E C I S I O N

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Hon Stock JA (giving the decision of the Court):

1. This is an application for leave to appeal against conviction.  Today’s hearing has to be adjourned because of a last minute substitution of grounds of appeal on behalf of the applicant. 

2. This is yet another case where an application for which each member of this Court has spent hours in preparation, to say nothing of the respondent’s waste of time, has had to be adjourned in circumstances where all the wasted work and the adjournment could readily have been avoided, had the solicitors in this case acted promptly when they realized that the hearing date was at real risk.  Time and again in the criminal jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal, judges do hours of work only to find that their time has been wasted in this way.  The court remains powerless to make a wasted costs order against legal advisers because of the ridiculously narrow ambit of section 18 of the Costs in Criminal Cases Ordinance, an ambit which encompasses unlikely circumstances, and circumstances far narrower than prescribed by legislation in other jurisdictions.  The reason for the narrowing is best known to those who drafted and to those who passed this legislation; but we have to say, yet again – in forlorn hope, perhaps, that something will be done – that the legislation, as it stands, pays no regard to the time and work of judges that is so frequently wasted, the time and work of other parties that is wasted, and to public funds that are thrown away in consequence.

3. We shall, in this case, order that the applicant shall pay to the respondent the costs of and occasioned by the adjournment, such costs to be taxed if not agreed.