Another Legal 1st for Gulbenkian Andonian Solicitors

Recent achievements from our Senior Legal Officer, Head of Appeals and Public Law, Fadi Farhat on the case of MN (Pakistan) v Upper Tribunal and other.

This case was a “Cart-type Judicial Review” in the High court to quash the decision of the Upper Tribunal.

For the High Court to quash the decision of the Upper Tribunal is very rare (it’s only happened a handful of times in the history of this type of application).

In mid-2017, Mr Farhat managed to do it on the file of R on the application of AB and others [2017] which was the first time that the High Court quashed the Upper Tribunal’s decision without the need for a hearing. That was legal history then.

In MN (Pakistan) v Upper Tribunal and other, the High Court did not agree with Mr Farhat and refused the application and was even critical of it.

Mr Farhat had a limited avenue to apply to the Court of Appeal. This was a risky application with potential costs implications and the possibility of distressing the Court of Appeal but he pursued in either case.

On Jan 28th 2019, Mr Farhat received great news confirming that the Court of Appeal has granted permission and had ordered the matter to be sent back to the High Court.

Having called the Civil Appeals Office, statistically, this is the first time that the Court of Appeal has sent a matter back down to the High Court on refusal of a Cart-type Judicial Review.

All grounds (for the Judicial Review and for the Court of Appeal including the skeleton argument for the Court of Appeal) were drafted in-house without the assistance of counsel. This makes this achievement even more pleasurable from a professional perspective.

This is another milestone achievement for Gulbenkian Andonian Solicitors which has been at the forefront of legal developments in Immigration, Nationality, Asylum, Human Rights and Civil Litigation since 1985.