The Gazette 1958-61

of the Road Traffic Act, 1930, had accordingly not been complied with. The Lord Chief Justice said that after a not very serious accident the commissioner decided to prose– cute the defendant for careless driving and a notice was sent of intended prosecution on 2oth June, 10 days after the accident, by registered post to the address which he had given to the police officer who investigated the accident at the time. On 27th June the notice and its envelope was returned to the police by the Post Office. The defendant did not in fact receive the notice because he was away from his home so that no registered post could be taken in. The prosecutor made no inquiries as to the whereabouts of the defendant nor did he consult the London Passenger Transport Executive who, to his knowledge, were his employers. On 2nd July a police officer saw the defendant at his home and personally served on him a second notice and ex– plained what had happened to the original notice. The question was whether the first notice had been " served " or not. In Regina v. County of London Quarter Sessions Appeals Committee, ex parteRossi((i956 2 W.L.R. 800) the Court of Appeal decided that where a notice was served or purported to be served by registered post it was not enough to prove that it was correctly directed, stamped, and posted. It could be shown that the letter was never delivered, and, if so, there had not been service. They had reversed the decision of the Divisional Court which had held that there had been service. It might be that one could go to court and ask for leave to serve. They were bound to decide that there had not been service. The magistrate's decision was right and the appeal must be dismissed. Mr. Justice Hilbery ana Mr. Justice Donovan agreed. (Beer v. Davies [1958] 2. All E.R. 255.) N0#. Sect. 55 (2) of the Road Traffic Act, 1933 does not prescribe that a notice of intended prosecution must be served personally by the .Garda, although it has been customary to do so. Solicitors held liable for proportion of costs on ground of no reasonable prospects of success after order of discovery. Mr. Justice Sachs, affirming the Registrar's report, made an order making the firm of solicitors who had acted for Mrs. Edwards, of Kew Gardens, Surrey, in an application for an order against her husband, Mr. Fielding Edwards, on the ground that he had wilfully neglected to provide her with reason– able maintenance under section 23 of the Matrimonial Causes Act, 1950, which had been dismissed on 2ist October, 1957, personally liable for the costs incurred in the application after August, 1957, at

which date, his Lordship said, they should have come to the conclusion that the application had no reasonable prospects of success. Mr. Justice Sachs said that he felt bound to re– iterate that if the wife's advisers had acted reasonably in accepting certain figures relevant to the husband's financial position, and in advising the wife to disclose certain figures relevant to the husband's financial position, and in advising the wife to disclose certain charges she had been making on the husband's accounts at certain stores, the hearing of her appli– cation could have been disposed of in one day whereas it had taken two . . At the conclusion of the hearing and after the wife's application had been dismissed, counsel for the husband had made an application that the wife's solicitors should be made personally liable for the costs of the proceedings, or for the costs incurred therein after discovery had taken place, or for the costs of copying unnecessary documents. His Lordship had thereupon directed that the matter should be referred to a registrar for a report inter alia on the extent to which the husband's solicitors had conducted the case on her behalf, and that report was now before him and was to be adopted. The application of the solicitors for the husband raised matters of serious importance. The basis of the Court's jurisdiction to make solicitors personally liable for costs had been explained in Myers r. Elman ((1940) A.C. 282), as the duty of solicitors as officers of the Supreme Court to conduct litigation with due propriety. The conduct complained of must be such as to involve a failure on the part of the solicitor concerned to promote the cause of justice. Its purpose was not to punish but to protect a completely innocent party. The mere fact that the litigation failed or that there was an error of judgment or mere negligence was not sufficient; there must be something which amounted to a serious dereliction of duty and which was gross. It was not normally necessary to establish mala fides and no imputation whatsoever had been made against the honesty of the solicitor having the con– duct of the wife's case, in the present matter. The class of act concerned were those in which there was an abuse of the process of the Court or oppressive conduct generally, and since that conduct had been established the matter was still one of discretion, to be exercised carefully and with regard to the repercussions of such an order being made. The first issue was whether the wife's solicitors were in such grave fault in their conduct of the case as to make it right that they should bear the costs. It had to be borne in mind that an application under section 23 of the Act of 1950 had special features. The wife, by swearing an affidavit of optimistic ii