The “elderly actress” and the first petitioner

 “[The Court fees] will be higher than usual …in large measure…due to the first petitioner not following the Court’s directions with regard to public notice and making repeated ad hominem criticisms of unnamed diocesan employees and the staff at the registry, all of which have been found to be ill-founded, and most rooted in a fundamental misapprehension of the legal process which the petitioners chose to invoke”. 

Re St. Mary Chithurst

But it all started so well, with what as “at heart a straightforward petition: some may consider it trivial. It concerns a proposal to fell an ash tree” [1]. However, in the experience of the Chancellor, such proposals can generate strong local feeling, citing Re St. Peter West Blatchington [2019] ECC Chi 4, which “attracted some attention in the local and national press”; this will be more familiar to our readers as “Churchwardens, pine cones and a cheeky squirrel“, which (at the time) was written as “light relief from Brexit”. Continue reading