IN THE MATTER OF THE PETITION OF HOLMES CHANCERY DIVISION [2009 MLR 112] 20 January 2009 DEEMSTER CORLETT Civil procedure—Judgments and orders—Wrongly granted—Remedies—Manx court having given effect to English court order wrongly and illegally registered on Island—Aggrieved party possibly has action in negligence against General Registry Tort—Negligence—Negligence of General Registry—Aggrieved party possibly having action for negligent acts of General Registry—Manx court giving effect to English court order wrongly and illegally registered on Island The petitioner, Mr Holmes, sought the review of all events relating to and all documents issued by the High Court office in a children's matter to which he was a party. On 1 July 2004, 5 November 2004 and 16 November 2005 Deputy Deemster Williamson made certain orders in a children's matter to which Mr Holmes was a party. Deputy Deemster Williamson's orders were based on orders of the Lancaster County Court, made in 2004, which had been registered in the Isle of Man. The Staff of Government (Appeals) Division subsequently held that the purported registration of the Lancaster County court orders in the Isle of Man was not a valid registration and that Deputy Deemster Williamson's orders based thereon could not stand and had to be quashed. Mr Holmes proceeded to bring a petition of doleance against the General Registry for the review of 'the events of 2004' and documents issued by the High Court office, even up to the end of March 2008, in the matter to which he was a party, which came before Deputy Deemster Williamson. He sought a declaration that the parties to whom the petition was addressed acted unlawfully and that the instrument sent to the police and head teacher was 'a false instrument used with intent'. The alleged facts upon which Mr Holmes brought his petition were that, as a result of the erroneous registration of the Lancaster County court orders and the decisions made by Deputy Deemster Williamson: (a) he suffered a nervous breakdown in 2005 and suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as a borderline personality disorder; (b) he did not have a relationship with his children between October 2004 and January 2008; and (c) a police constable abducted his daughter and, in September 2007, West Midlands Police arrested him on suspicion of child abduction, that stemming also from documents issued by the Isle of Man court. The respondent and the other noticed parties, the Departments of Education and of Home Affairs, brought an interlocutory application to strike out the petition on the grounds that: (i) it disclosed no reasonable cause of action; (ii) it was frivolous and vexatious; (iii) it was unnecessary and scandalous; and/or (iv) it was an abuse of process. At the hearing of the application it was submitted for the General Registry that the petition had to be struck out on various grounds: (a) It disclosed no reasonable cause of action. It was, in essence, a claim for a roving review of the events of 2004 and 2005 and, in so far as the petition made any proper claim for relief, it was a matter which had already been amply addressed by the Staff of Government (Appeals) Division in its judgment of 26 October 2007, in which it had made a declaration that the purported registration of the Lancaster County court orders was invalid. As such, the petition was also an abuse of process. (b) It was also an abuse of process because the