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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions >> Sutton v Hutchinson [2005] EWCA Civ 1773 (09 November 2005) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2005/1773.html Cite as: [2005] EWCA Civ 1773 |
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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
Strand London, WC2 |
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B e f o r e :
LORD JUSTICE KEENE
LORD JUSTICE GAGE
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KIERAN SUTTON | Claimant/Respondent | |
-v- | ||
KAY HUTCHINSON | Defendant/Appellant |
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Smith Bernal Wordwave Limited
190 Fleet Street, London EC4A 2AG
Tel No: 020 7404 1400 Fax No: 020 7831 8838
Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)
The Respondent appeared in person
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Crown Copyright ©
Wednesday, 9th November 2005
"There is a dispute between them as to how much was paid for services. On Mr Sutton's account it was a sum well in excess of £100,000. On Miss Hutchinson's side it was a sum which did not fall much below £100,000. This case is not about how much was paid for services. This case is about whether any money at all was paid by way of loan.
5. His case is that he loaned her various sums of money, on the amended case amounting to some £74,327, but he is content to limit his claim to the sum originally pleaded of £73,000."
"Q. The anger was because you felt, as you quite rightly pointed out, Miss Hutchinson had made a fool of you.
A. Yes.
Q. She had been pretending. There you are -- 'Handsome, kind Mr Sutton, I am having a relationship with you because you are so lovely.' But in reality the only reason why she was having a relationship with you, as you now realise, is nothing to do with your good looks and humour, is it? It is because you have got loads of money.
A. Exactly.
Q. You were very angry about that.
A. I was angry when I found out that Miss Hutchinson had a boyfriend. I was angry because Miss Hutchinson has pretended to have a relationship, had told me on countless occasions that she actually loved me. Yes, I was angry. I reacted badly and I sent a number of text messages and letters through her door in relation to trying to get my loans back.
Q. I suggest that is a lie.
A. You suggesting things does not make things incorrect or a lie."
"'All I would say to you' -- and these were his words -- 'is to forget about it.' I sent the e-mail to Kay Hutchinson and I was prepared to forget about it, I was prepared to say I was an idiot and that was it, leave it at that and just cut my losses and walk away. However, when you get a call from a policeman, I think it was a day or two days later, informing you that you have to appear at a police station and have a statement read out to you about harassing a witness, and somebody saying, 'No, she never had sex with you', 'no, there was no relationship', 'I am frightened out of my wits', I said, no way was I letting this go."
"He clearly cannot accept that I do not wish to have any further contact with him, coupled with the fact we were never involved in an intimate relationship."
"The learned Judge failed to give a reasoned judgment on the defence and/or deal adequately or at all with the grounds raised by the defence, the judgment was not supported by the evidence and was perverse",
"Am I deducing anything from this?
MR NOBLE: You have paid out substantially more than you have taken in in that account. I have not actually added up the total amount paid out."
"JUDGE HARRIS: I am quite surprised at those figures.
MR NOBLE: Your Honour, I had better add them up again.
JUDGE HARRIS: 13,000 goes in. In addition to that, there is a drop in the balance from 42212, which means that more than 15,000 or so must have gone out.
MR NOBLE: I will add them up tonight.
JUDGE HARRIS: It looks as though your addition is not as it might be."
"Q. Let us just make this plain. I am saying that you are lying, that you are dishonest, that what you are saying is a pack of lies.
A. I am saying you are incorrect.
Q. How do you explain that at precisely the time you take money out of Peterborough, 8,000 on 6th January, there is a corresponding credit at the same branch, paid in at the same branch and probably at the same time? No doubt you did not actually go into that bank twice on that day. Simultaneous payment into your own account. How is that a payment to Miss Hutchinson?
A. Because I took the money out of the Shardow account and I transferred the money from my NatWest account back to Shardow Limited. In the meantime Miss Hutchinson was given the cash.
Q. You are saying when you took £7,000 out of the bank, you had 6,000 in your back pocket which you immediately paid into the bank?
A. I always had cash on me, yes.
Q. Why did you not explain that in your statement?
A. I did explain that in my statement.
Q. No; what you explained is that you took the cash out of the bank and paid it to Miss Hutchinson. You did not say there was a system of double book-keeping whereby every time you paid a cash sum to Miss Hutchinson, you took an identical cash sum out of your pocket and lodged it in ----
A. I said in my statement that I made withdrawals from the Shardow credit card and I reimbursed Shardow Limited. There is a schedule of payments and repayments in relation to it.
Q. But you do not say that you make the repayment at precisely the same time ----
A. It was not always precisely the same time.
Q. We will see."
JUDGE HARRIS: I am not quite following this. You will have to forgive me. Let me take the first transaction on 8th January. You take £7,000 out of the Shardow account.
A. Yes.
Q. On the following day you are putting £6,000 into a joint account.
A. Yes.
Q. But you are saying that the money that you took out of Shardow, you gave to the defendant?
A. Yes.
Q. And the money that you put into the joint account was other money that you happened to have.
A. I could not take the money out of the joint account because I was afraid my wife would see exactly where the money was going. So I used Shardow to basically hide the payments but refunded Shardow any monies that I withdrew.
Q. If you had £6,000 in your pocket anyhow, so that you could put the money into the joint account, why did you not give that money to the defendant?
A. Because I was giving monies to the defendant in relation to her services. I was paying things for her and, to be quite honest with you, I was losing track as regards to what was going out in relation to everything. I wanted a system whereby I would formally record the actual loans to the defendant, so I used Shardow as a sort of ledger to actually do that.
Q. It was quite unnecessary to use any of these accounts ----
A. Yes.
Q. ---- because you are saying that you had the money in cash in your pocket anyhow in order to put them into the joint account.
A. Yes, but I was giving so much money over to Kay that I needed some mechanism for actually recording it, so I used Shardow as that mechanism.
Q. So that is ----
A. It also, I hid things from my wife then.
Q. Sorry?
A. It also hid any payments from my wife because she ultimately saw lodgements basically going into the joint account and then transfers going from the joint account to Shardow."
"The second criticism" -- that is to say criticism by Mr Noble -- "is that the payments which are alleged to have been made by way of service, the cash payments, could not have come from his accounts and it is true that in some of the pleaded documents he attributes the source of these payments rather more directly than he now says is the case. He had, I am quite satisfied, very significant amounts of cash floating around in one shape or another. In the year that we are talking about the receipts from his business, which are essentially his earnings before taking off expenditures, amounted to 420,672.43 Euros. That is a not inconsiderable sum of money. He clearly had cash available at various points and stages throughout this time and I am bound to say that I am not at all surprised that he was able to find cash to make the payments that he says that he made."
"The final criticism is that there is some very odd double accounting transactions and I agree, there are. Money comes out of one account, goes into another account and yet at the same time he is asserting that he is able to pay that money to Miss Hutchinson. His explanation for that was that he needed to do that in order to be able to identify the loans that he was making. Bizarre, I accept, but I regret to say that there is an aspect of this case that I think I can only reasonably categorise as somewhat murky, murky on the side of both parties.
56. When it comes to this issue, this is not sufficient to persuade me that the documents to which I have referred are false, that the documents do not fairly reflect the loans that he was making and are not sufficient to persuade me that I ought to start looking at the individual loans and removing some of them rather than others. I accept his evidence, I reject the evidence of Miss Hutchinson and therefore I give judgment for the sum that he claims."
"What is Miss Hutchinson's reaction to these documents? She does not seek to argue that the use of the word 'loan' is a euphemism for services in the same way as the word 'gift' was a euphemism for services. I have not investigated these documents in depth to see whether that would have been an approach to the documents. She does not do that. What she says is that these documents are a complete fabrication."
"The appeal is arguable even though the appellant has an uphill battle to reverse the judge on the facts. The court may need assistance on the question whether, even if the judge was right to hold that the relevant sums were monies lent to the appellant, recovery may be precluded since the loans were made for a sexual consideration or in the context of a sexual relationship."
"Received from Ms Kay Hutchinson £2,500 stg as part payment against loans advanced."
"I the undersigned paid Ms Kay Hutchinson amounts of money for her time and companionship. In addition I have recently loaned her some money to support her purchase/refurbishment of an apartment at Long Lane in London.
If a tax liability becomes due on any of these monies, I the undersigned agree to reimburse Ms Hutchinson an as yet to be agreed amount, in a mutually acceptable manner for any financial loss suffered."
"Three of these documents bear signatures from Miss Hutchinson. She accepts that they are hers in the sense that she would have written a signature like those. She says that he had access to documents which contained her signature and by some clever device or other could have transferred them to these three documents. It is obvious looking at the signatures that they are different signatures. I suppose if you are being clever you would want to have them different but not too different. I have received no evidence from any quarter, but certainly not from the defendant's quarter, to help me forensically as to how feasible it would have been to create, falsify if you like, documents of this kind.
33. Another feature of importance is that the only receipts that are in the documentation are receipts for repayments of the loan. Once again, I think it fair to say that that is devilishly clever. It is not beyond the bounds of what a clever forger might want to do, but it is quite clever. It means, for example, that instead of being able to claim £83,000 or £84,000 he was instantly knocking £10,000 off his claim to bring it down to £73,000. I have to balance these factors as best I can."
"I do not believe that Mr Sutton could not conceivably have had the ingenuity and the subtlety to create documents of this kind. It is beyond my comprehension that he would do so. I must decide this case on a balance of probabilities and on the balance of probabilities these documents are genuine. It follows that Miss Hutchinson has deliberately and falsely said that they are not genuine. It also helps me in deciding who has been telling the truth."
"... that if Mr Sutton is the amazingly subtle and clever forger that he would have to have been in order to create these documents, it was the most appalling mistake for him to provide his solicitors with two versions of this document for onward submission to the defendant." (See paragraph 34.)
"I don't know why you are going off on one but as you won't take my calls I'll try writing to you. I left the note at the Sanderson because that is all you talk about these days, 'My money', what about mine. If offsetting the 10k you gave me against the money you owe me is a problem well then ok, I'm sorry, I'll give it back to you this week.
Whatever you do about the car is going to be a problem, you said at the time parking was not going to be an issue. If you sell it you are still going to have to lodge the chq somewhere, then it will be liable to tax. Why don't you want to give it back to me? We can agree a price (opportunity for negotiating top!) I'll still give you the 10k back separately. Why don't we sort out 10k, agree price for BMW and go from there. That will square everything except loans, but I don't need this money right away.
Let me know what you think. Please call."
"K,
If you are reading this then I can only say I am both saddened and disappointed as I will only have left it as you have not contacted me.
There were ways out of our situation, you have chosen to ignore them and to focus on getting your money back.
I honestly don't know how you feel about me in light of this, but I am not leaving you the money. My reason is quite simple, if you had thought anything of me you would have given up on this. Indeed you know there were numerous options but I can't condone the one you have chosen.
I don't expect to hear from you again. I do love you and would do almost anything for you. I wish you well."
"I wrote a chq last week for the bungalow which I told you about last weekend etc. etc. I don't have a problem living off my savings at all but the reason I got upset this morning was because I knew I couldn't afford 7k right now from what I've got to go for the bungalow, so basically when you said you wouldn't give me the money I knew I'd have to pull out of the deal. I have some money to live on but thought when you said you wouldn't mind giving me it on Monday I could still go for it.
Sorry to annoy you, everything I do annoys you at the moment."