Supreme Court dismisses appeal in Serafin

Court of Appeal upheld as to judicial unfairness – re-trial on all issues including s.4

The Supreme Court handed down judgment this morning (3 June 2020) in the Defendants’ appeal against the ruling of the Court of Appeal in Serafin  v Malkiewicz and others.

The Supreme Court upheld the ruling of the Court of Appeal that the trial judge had conducted the trial unfairly and ordered a retrial of the whole case.  In the light of the order for retrial, the Court decided not to rule on the merits of the Defendants’ s.4 defence or the merits of any part of the truth defence but remitted these for trial.  The Court did, however, make some general observations as to the law on s.4 approving Warby J.’s and Sharp LJ’s statements of principle in Economou, and making some criticisms of the Court of Appeal’s statements of the law.

The Respondent was represented in the Supreme Court by 5RB’s Adrienne Page QC and Alexandra Marzec, instructed by Simon Burn Solicitors (Cheltenham).

The full judgment can be downloaded from the ‘Files‘ link below.

A 5RB case report is available here.