Adams v Adams

• Jurisdiction: Barbados
• Court: High Court (Barbados)
• Judge: Field, C.J.,Hanschell, .J.
• Judgment Date: 02 January 1959
• Neutral Citation: BB 1959 HC 1
• Date: 02 January 1959

High Court

Field, C.J.; Hanschell, .J.

Adams

and

Adams

Appearances:

H. A. Williams for the appellant.

J. S. B. Dear for the respondent.

Solicitors:

Haynes & Griffith for the appellant.

Hutchinson & Banfield for the respondent.

Practice and procedure - Maintenance order — Arrears — Seventeen summonses — Magistrates' Jurisdiction and Procedure Act, 1956

Judgment of the Court:

1 This is an appeal from the decision of a magistrate given on September 28, 1958, whereby the appellant was ordered to pay various sums in respect of arrears due under a maintenance order. There were seventeen summonses issued in respect of seventeen separate and distinct sums of money as appear on the record, of which five were for the support of the wife (complainant respondent) and twelve were for the support of the children. These seventeen summonses were heard at one and the same time. Of these, five of the sums were ordered to be paid forthwith and the remaining twelve were ordered to be paid within periods varying from seven to twenty-eight days. The form of notice of appeal which appears on the record purports to be given in respect of the seventeen orders, as it was written on it “Appellant gives notice of appeal in all seventeen cases,” thus suggesting that notice was given verbally by the appellant, reduced into writing by the Clerk and signed by the appellant. There is a recognizance also on the record entered into by the appellant as principal with one surety in the sum of $25.00.

2 Counsel for the respondent has taken four objections in limine, namely:

• (1) There was only one recognizance and there should be seventeen.

• (2) No grounds of appeal were received by the respondent — this objection was subsequently abandoned.

• (3) Only one notice of appeal was given in respect of seventeen cases.

• (4) Of the grounds of appeal, grounds 1 and 3 are unknown to the law.

3 The court considers that the notice substantially complies with section 132 of the Magistrates' Jurisdiction and Procedure Act, 1956 and that the respondent could not reasonably be held to have been thereby deceived or misled. For this we rely on section 149 of the said Act and on Regina v. The Justices of Oxfordshire 114 E.R. 865.

4 On the question of the recognizance and its sufficiency it will be seen from the condition of the form of recognizance that this condition has been amended so that it purports to cover “the appeals” in part of the said condition and suggests that the magistrate treated it as, a recognizance in respect of all seventeen appeals.

5 Section 137 of...