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There is only one appeal hearing listed next week. Lords Hope, Rodger, Brown, Kerr and Lady Hale will hear the appeal in R (on the application of SK Zimbabwe) v Secretary of State of the Home Department on 10 and 11 February. The case concerns a Zimbabwean national, SK, who was detained pending deportation (as he was considered a flight risk). SK sought judicial review of his detention on the basis that he was being unlawfully retained by virtue of the Home Department’s failure to carry our regular reviews of his detention.  The case is previewed by Samantha Knights of Matrix here.  

At 9.45am on Wednesday 10 February, a five bench judge (Lords Hope, Roger, Walker, Brown and Kerr) will hand down judgments in two Scottish cases, Allison v Her Majesty’s Advocate and McInnes v Her Majesty’s Advocate, both of which were heard on 8 December 2009 alongside Martin and Miller.  All four appeals were from the High Court of Justiciary sitting as the Criminal Appeal Court in Scotland.  Allison concerns the prosecution’s failure to disclose to the defence previous convictions and the criminal history on one of its witnesses.  McInnes also concerns the non-disclosure of information by the prosecution in a criminal trial.    Aidan O’Neill’s detailed commentary on all four of these cases can be found here and here.
 
For the third consecutive week, there are no sittings of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.  By the end of next week it will have sat for only 3 days out of a possible 20 this terms, or 15% of the time.   Furthermore there are no cases listed for the Judicial Committee for the following week – which will mean four consecutive weeks without a hearing which seems to us something of a record.  We do not know whether there is a general fall off in appeals or the absence of work this term is a temporary listing anomaly.
 
The Supreme Court’s workload is rather higher, by the end of next week it  will have sat for 11 days out of 20, or 55% of the time.   If all 11 justices sat every day the Court could, this term have reached 220 “judge sitting days”, whereas in fact the justices have sat for a total of 40.5 person days or 18% of the theoretical maximum.    The Supreme Court is not suffering from a general fall off of work.  The full figures for pending appeals are not publicly available (although they should be) but consideration of the cases in which permission to appeal was granted in 2009 appears to show that 26 have not yet been heard and, of these 19 have not even been listed.  It seems likely that the figure of 19 appeals awaiting listing will be an underestimate as it takes no account of cases in which permission has been given in 2010 (for example, Joseph v Spiller, see here and R (Electoral Commission) v Westminster Magistrates – the UKIP case, see here) or of cases in which the Court of Appeal itself has granted permission.  
 
Judgments
 
As of this week, the following Supreme Court judgments remain outstanding:
 
Agbaje v Akinnoye-Agbaje, heard 3-4 Nov 2009
Tomlinson v Birmingham City Council, heard 23 Nov 2009
Norris v Government of United States, heard 30 Nov – 1 Dec 2009
RTS Flexible Systems v Muller, heard 2-3 Dec 2009
R (JS Sri Lanka) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, heard 13-14 Jan 2010
R (Lewis) v Redcar and Cleveland BC, heard 18, 19 and 20 Jan 2010.
R (on the application of Sainsbury’s) v Wolverhampton City Council, heard 1-2 Feb 2010
R (on the application of JF) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, heard 3 -4 Feb 2010
 
The following Privy Council judgments are awaited:
 
Theresa Henry v Calixtus Henry (St Lucia) heard 4 November 2009
McNicholls v Judicial and Legal Service Commission (Trinidad and Tobago), heard 9 November 2009
O’Connor v Piccott (Jamaica), heard 30 November and 1 December 2009
Prime Minister of Belize v Vellos, heard 18 January 2010
Tibbetts v A-G of Cayman Islands, heard 21 January 2010