An acting Deemster appointed to deliver judgment in an unprecedentedly delayed high-court case has said no one should under-estimate the enormity of the task.
The multi-million pound class action against Friends Provident International and the Utmost Group concluded in May 2024 following a seven-week trial, but no judgment was ever handed down.
In that time 24 claimants have died.
An investigation by the Judicial Conduct Office concluded that his earlier delays amounted to misconduct.
Now Deemster Matthew Marsh has been appointed to take over the case, with a remit to deliver judgment as soon as possible.
At a case management hearing on Tuesday, he told the court: ‘I don’t think anyone should under-estimate the enormity of the task. It’s virtually unprecedented. I can’t cure the ills - all I can do is make them less bad.’
And he acknowledged: ‘I know I’m going to need some help. There’s a very serious risk that without some assistance the court is going to get material parts of the judgment wrong.’
He said it was ‘abundantly clear’ that none of the parties were at fault for the situation they find themselves in.
Advocated Jonathan Wild, representing both lead claimants, said there was broad agreement between the parties that any retrial should largely be by way of transcripts, recordings and the document bundle from the first trial, and repeating live evidence was unnecessary.
He admitted there was no funding left after the first trial to cover the cost of a full retrial.
William Buck, representing Utmost, said his client was defending another major and complicated class action - with a trial listed for 10 weeks starting March 15. He said that case involved the disclosure of well over 100,000 documents.
He said it was ‘simply impracticable’ to have the delayed case determined before this other one. Mr Buck proposed submissions being provided in May 2027 with a substantive hearing in July and closing submissions at the start of September.
But Acting Deemster Marsh said this would mean no real prospect of a judgment until 2028 which he said was ‘just not acceptable’.
And said the Manx court did not like ‘having a gun held to its head’.
He said this case was the first to be heard and needed to be resolved first.
Jonathan Nash KC, representing FPI, proposed an abbreviated process that would enable the case to be tried before the other class action. He said there had to be an opportunity for the defendants in the case to address the Deemster or they would feel they hadn’t had a fair trial.
The claimants are primarily British pensioners who invested life savings in a number of high-risk funds that later collapsed.
Mr Buck said that some of the claimants were, on their own evidence, ‘substantially wealthy’ while Mr Nash suggested that the 300 claimants in the case against FPI could provide £5,000 each towards the cost of a retrial.