Judge refuses to Ctrl-Z divorce order made by a misclick A simple misclick at a London law firm led to a surprise divorce for an unsuspecting couple. An employee at Vardags, self-described specialists in high-net-worth marital breakdowns, opened the wrong file when applying for a divorce in His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) online portal. With a click more potent …
"Could I file divorce papers for Rishi Sunak without his permission?"
That's what I was thinking, but in another report of this story, it said that the judge could not set aside the divorce (ie reverse it) because the solicitors, despite making a mistake, were still acting with full authority of their client (the "wife"). She gave them root access, they did rm *, whoops, but can't be undone.
So if anyone did maliciously do such a thing without the person's permission, it probably could be easily set aside since they wouldn't be acting with authority from the now divorcee. Also, in the full judgement, it says that unless you were a professional solicitor with authority from a client you would only ever be able to access your own case on the system, not anyone elses.
It seems from the full legal report that the husband and wife were already going through a divorce, since the wife had been granted permission to apply for a final divorce. The husband and wife also had separate solicitors which suggests a degree of separation between them. The husband's solicitors didn't want the divorce set aside (presumably with the husband's authority) but the wife's solicitors did. I wonder if, given the speciality of the wife's lawyers being "ultra high net worth family cases", the wife was pursuing her husband for a large settlement before activating the final divorce, and this mess up has brought the divorce about before any settlement had agreed. Could explain why the husband's solicitors want it to stand and the wife's want it reversed (until they've got that high value settlement for the wife).
A “fat-finger error” by a London-based trader at Citigroup that triggered a flash crash across European stock markets could cost the bank at least $50m (£39.8m). The trader was working from home last month when they incorrectly added an extra zero to a trade, Bloomberg reported, quoting “people familiar with the matter”. That split-second mistake, on the 2 May bank holiday, wreaked havoc on markets across Europe, triggering a sell-off that reportedly wiped out as much as €300bn (£256bn) at one point. ["Flash crash set off by ‘fat-fingered’ Citigroup trader could cost $50m", Guardian]
Some computer software should probably operate under a two-person rule to prevent this kind of craziness. Convenience should not trump double-checks when there is a risk that "soft"-actions (oops!) can't be walked back ... IMHO.
I know someone who did that many, many years ago when buying yen for a company. The numbers were obviously long, and they accidentally ordered ten times as many yen as the company would need over the year... fortunately the market moved in his favour overnight, before the error could be rectified.
"Yes, the BBC story says, "Mrs Williams applied for divorce in January 2023"
Be careful what you wish for.
On the other hand, if there was no financial judgement made before the divorce was finalized, the gent is free and clear of any alimony or loss of any finances to the missus. So silver lining perhaps?
"On the other hand, if there was no financial judgement made before the divorce was finalized, the gent is free and clear of any alimony or loss of any finances to the missus. So silver lining perhaps?"
Not how it works. The financial arrangements (and child arrangements if they have any) are separate cases from ending the marriage. While it is usual to proceed with them in parallel so they are done by the tine the final order is issued, you do not have to.
I am not familiar with British marriage law (or really marriage law anywhere) and the article doesn't make this clear. If there is no effect on monetary or family matters, why does anyone want this undone in the first place? If this judgement was already a certainty and it was just a matter of time, what was the result of it being submitted early and what would be the benefit of having it reversed if it would only be repeated? If the answer is nothing, why not just consider it done early?
Does this mean you could pay a solicitor to e-file paperwork in a case and get it settled in your clients' favor without the other side even knowing?
If it stands, this means that you could pay a solicitor to e-file paperwork in a case and get it settled against you, if you have specifically authorized them to settle, even if it was an accident and you had clearly communicated that their permission to settle did not include just giving in and throwing the case away.
To be clear, I think this is bad law, and elevates the interests of the court above the interests of the parties, but it is well known that special cases make bad law, and this was clearly a special case.
A problem here is that the courts (lawyers) have pretty much given themselves (lawyers) immunity to negligence liability, so proceedings against the legal companies insurance are going to be a tough ask, even in a case like this.
Yes, I saw something about this in a newspaper somebody was reading a few days ago.
Having worked in IT in a law firm, from my knowledge of the divorce process what has been reported doesn't actually make sense. It simply cannot be the case that somebody came into a Solicitors asking for some advice on defending themselves in court for speeding ended up getting divorced instead accidentally through a wrong keypress.
Broadly speaking in order to obtain a divorce you have to file several kilograms of paperwork, attend hearings etc which used to require a decree Nisi, which is the court declaring that there is no procedural reason that you can't obtain a divorce. There is then a period of haggling about the financial settlement which properly speaking isn't per se part of the divorce process (ie; who wants to keep a particular favourite pet, and various forms of emotional and financial blackmail applied to make the process as traumatic as possible to quasi legally extort the most possible out of the ex partner) before agreeing to make the divorce complete by applying for and receiving a decree absolute which I think is now just called a "final order", which is another casualty of the drive to eliminate any latin derived words used for the last two thousand years without harm in the legal system.
If you applied for a decree absolute without the decree nisi being in place then it'd be rejected.
Therefore what presumably happened was that somebody was in the process of getting a divorce, had already obtained the decree Nisi but hadn't finished with the emotional/financial blackmail part and their Solicitor pressed the "apply for decree absolute" button and it was applied for and granted.
At which point the person objected that they hadn't finished with their sort of legal emotional and financial blackmail and asked the court if they could undo the decree absolute so they could use it as leverage for their extortion scheme. (eg; i'll only divorce you if....) The person being quasi legally blackmailed said they were delighted that it was now all over, and was horrified at the prospect of being subjected to this again, and please don't do that to me. The court (being absolutely delighted to get shot of the case and with no more desire to deal with it than the person being quasi legally blackmailed) said in effect "nope, sue your Solicitor for the mistake if you wanted more money", which explains that comment since otherwise if it was a genuine mistake of the court in granting a decree absolute when they shouldn't have done then they'd surely have reversed it.
The publicity attempt is therefore presumably in the cynical hope that it will build public pressure to reverse that decision, which would fit with press releases which appear to be somewhat misleading from the true state of affairs to the point that one could claim that it's akin to "lying through omission".
I think you are out of date. Since no fault divorce was introduced in 2022 it is very simple. I filed for divorce under the new procedure as soon as it was introduced in April 2022.
1. apple online
2. have spouse acknowledge receipt of email, otherwise arrange to have papers to be served
3. Wait a few months (there is colling off period)
4. get notified you have conditional order (what used to be called the decreee nisi)
5. Wait a few more weeks
6. Apply for the decree absolute.You get it the same day.
There can be a lot of paperwork with the financial and child arrangements cases, but these are separate and do not have to happen (my ex and I just handled things with informal arrangements).
You are probably right that the applicant was delaying applying for the final order as some sort of outmaneuver, but after three months the other spouse can apply for the final order so it cannot be held up for long which limits its value as a threat. If you want all the details of the process they are here: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/family/how-to-separate1/getting-a-divorce-or-dissolution/
But this is what I mean. They'd already done stages 1-5, and then the law firm accidentally did step 6 earlier than the client wanted.
It's hardly a case of somebody off the street accidentally being divorced by a paperwork error and the court refusing to reinstate the marriage of a happily married couple, which is how it's made to sound in most media.
To add into this, it's like to be a LOT of financial blackmail at stake here. From another article on the debacle: "Vardag, the self-styled ‘diva of divorce’, has acted for several wealthy clients, including obtaining a £64 million settlement...". This isn't likely to be an average divorce arguing over the family dog, it's going to be an argument about how many millions the former Mrs Williams gets from her ex-husband.
... The wife had already applied for a divorce (hence the case being in the system), so I'm confused as to why the divorce should be undone (if all the paperwork before the court indicates that everything's been resolved and all the tees have been crossed and all the eyes have been dotted, then the system rightly goes "well, I'll accept your request and get a judge to approve it!").
Sounds to me like the solicitors did *someone* a favour with this flub. The divorce is done. If you still need to negotiate terms, you have the chance to do it now, but not as married people anymore. Good luck.
A clerk in a law firm presses the right button on the wrong file on a government web portal. The court issues an order as a result, seemingly with zero measures in place to check for error. That, frankly, sounds terrifying.
Who’d want to be a clerk in a solicitor’s office, pressing buttons on that court web portal now?
There are all sorts of reasons why the data in an IT system could be not as intended. You'd think that in the midst of the Post Office IT scandal (something that the courts themselves have been astonishingly naive about) a judge wouldn't just go with what their own IT says. You'd like to think they'd actually ask someone if that is indeed the case / motion they were expecting to be heard. But no. IT is always right, right?
Had that been a child adoption case and a clerk had made a similar error leading to an adoption being awarded "automatically" as a result, there is no undoing that; adoption is a lacuna in law. Even if the Judge wanted to reverse such an error in such a case, there is no means to do so.
Troubling Attitude of the Judiciary?
Another reason this is important. Our judiciary won't let defence contest expert testimony. However, the judiciary themselves are not adequately testing expert testimony. They've repeatedly got this wrong, not least with Roy Meadow persuading them that bereaved mothers who'd lost children to cot death should be jailed, and now with the Post Office. How the court system as a whole didn't get curious as to why there were 700+ very similar cases all with an identical narrow evidence base is both alarming and astonishing.
The problem isn't the experts as such, the problem is the judiciary refusing to follow any sort of process that resembles "consensus building". They insist on a single person giving independent testimony, yet by definition the judiciary is not able to judge the fitness of such witnesses. They seem to rely largely on “eminence”, or “proximity to the events”. Neither are a good way of establishing what is scientifically or technically correct. This approach to "evidence" by the judiciary is literally killing people and has been for a while now.
That this has been the case for decades and seems not to be changing makes me think there is an "attitude" problem amongst the judiciary. Pretending there is no problem (and carrying on with cases regardless) when there plainly is a problem smacks of, what, arrogance?
And we've now seen a case go awry partly because of the brevity of the court process in which the judge plays an important role (or rather, doesn't play the part at all), and the judge has essentially said "Not my problem, go fix it yourself". If this is the general attitude of the judiciary to addressing shortcomings in how their courts are run, then we may all be screwed.
Furthermore, the users of the courts are obliged to use a court-controlled IT system, and the court process seems biased in favour of propagating human errors without any opportunities to check for them. It's a bit rich for the judge to pass all the blame on to a solicitor's clerk, in effect blaming the woman for having chosen an incompetent solicitor’s firm. Human error is not something one can reasonably choose to avoid. A court system that is instantly and irrevocably intransigent when a trivial human error is made sounds very much like maladministration of justice to me (no matter the merits of the outcome in this particular case).
Will This Come Back to Bight the Courts?
For all we know, the clerk isn't to blame; how likely is it that the clerk didn't screw up but the IT system (the court's IT system) is borked? That's far from impossible. Probably this clerk has been told in no uncertain terms that they've fouled up, but at the same time they've probably got no real record or recollection of what box they actually ticked, other than what the IT system now reports.
The situation the judge has created is one where, effectively, everyone using that IT system needs to independently record their actions on it or accept that their clients and themselves are the ones who live with the consequences of the system developers having made a mistake. This judge has made it clear that mistakes will not be rectified, so the only way of defending oneself (and one's clients) against system bugs (manifesting as “user error”) is to independently record your actions on the system. So, to what standard does that record have to be kept? An independent witness + video recording of the screen, all time stamped, lodge elsewhere, etc? If the IT system does make a mistake, what's it going to take to persuade the judiciary it's broken? One case? Two cases? A whole post office of hundreds of cases?
Just imagine if, after the Post Office scandal, the judiciary’s own systems were found to be in error, and the judiciary had been intransigent over the matter and had caused real harm to people in the process?
Data Protection Laws
One of the parts of law is that a business processing someone's personal data has broken the law if the processing is done incorrectly. Clearly in this case the woman has a case against her solicitors; they screwed up.
However, has the court itself broken data protection laws? The court has processed incorrect data. The court seemingly had no mechanism in place to determine that the data is indeed correct. The court provides the IT system and is in control of the court’s processes, without any option for an alternative. Furthermore, they’re refusing to correct the data record despite being told that it is in error. If a bank acted like this, they’d get sued to bits. Why should the judiciary be immune to criticism or consequences?
"Our judiciary won't let defence contest expert testimony."
Since when? Over a period of 14 years or so I gave expert testimony many times and it was open to the defence to cross-examine me.
The problems I've heard of were dubious defence experts. An example would be a quality control technician making statements about comparing glass fragments based on their practice of measuring RI and not knowing that techniques existed to measure to a couple more significant figures so that what they saw as identical could be differentiated; and the prosecution not taking advice from his own experts on how to cross-examine.
"However, the judiciary themselves are not adequately testing expert testimony."
That's not the judge's role.
OTOH there may indeed be problems with rogue prosecution witnesses. The counter for that would be proper defence experts to be called to counter it.
"Since when? "
(looks at 700+ Post Office cases) These ones. What opportunity was given by the courts to the defences to properly probe the veracity of the expert testimony in all of those hundreds of cases?
The issue is that, if the judge permits discussion on the correctness of technical evidence at all (may be some progress has been made there), a court case in front of a jury is absolutely the worst possible place for that discussion to occur, and can never comprise all the right people or exhaust the topic under debate. It's also massively inefficient; every defence council essentially has to be able to go find their own credible experts in many different topics. That's just nuts.
Our juries at best are getting to make a quasi random choice between the two sides (probably based more on who appears to be the more eminent than on any understanding of what was in testimony), or are having to follow a Judge's direction to accept one side or the other, or just being told to swallow prosecution evidence whole. Also our juries have no power to reject the testimony of all sides and and get their own expert opinion, meaning that if by chance someone on the jury does know their shit and has smelled bullshit, there's nothing they can do.
It's also a bit awkward if incorrect testimony from a witness is discredited (as seems to have been the case in your glass example) in anything other than the first case they're involved in. What happens if, 100 cases in, the witness finally comes up against a knowledgable adversary who finally exposes the inadequacy of their testimony? There's 99 cases that have gone wrong to sort out. That too is nuts. That's happened repeatedly in our court system (finger prints in Scotland, inadequate standards for DNA matches in the early days, failure to understand that radar is not communications, etc).
I think the French system is a whole lot more mature over the issue; they're inquisitorial, rather than adversarial. The jury is largely there to certify that the court's inquiry has been carried out correctly. It the court itself that makes the decision. This allows French courts to employ in as many people of the right sort to reach concensus on what a piece of data actually means as evidence. This is far, far closer to the scientific process of review, peer review, consensus. If someone like Roy Meadow were making a statistical assertion in the French system (such as he did in the British system), as I understand it the court itself is obliged to go get an actual statistician to double check the assertion (because they have to be able to tell the jury that the assertion was checked out). In the UK system, his word was taken as gospel sworn truth, and he bears a large slice of responsibility for what happened to those innocent mothers.
"That's not the judge's role."
Indeed not, but ultimately it is their responsibility. The Judge is there to run the case in a suitable manner such that any conviction is as fair and as sound as can be (and to pass sentence of course). They've let some absolute stinkers of prosecution witnesses hold sway over court cases for decades, not least Roy Meadow and the Post Office trials. The moment a judge gives a jury any direction whatsoever, or limits the information that the jury is allowed to see, or controls / limits what witnesses appear, or permits an imbalance in technical resources between prosecution and defence, they are personally responsible for it.
For example, I know of one case where a end of shift tired junior doctor's contemporaneous written opinion was admitted as prosecution evidence and the jury directed to accept it straight. The defence was not allowed to call any of the senior paediatricians who were adamanant the junior had made a basic error as witnesses, because they hadn't been there in the A&E department at the time. I know that lead to at least one senior paediatrician withdrawing their services from the court system in protest (a relative of a friend).
The sooner our court system stops being the adversarial pissing competetion and starts being a proper system of inquiring after the facts of a case, the better. I'm saying this not even having been on the right or wrong end of a court case, it's just that as a system to determine facts in the modern age of scientific reason the adversarial system is woefully inadequate and riddled with flaws.
I suspect that one of the reasons why there is so little change is because to make such a major change they have to admit that the adversarial system may have made mistakes. That then opens up the can of worms of mass appeals. They're kicking the problem down the road, hoping it won't be their problem to deal with. And now look. We've now had such a widespread miscarriage of justice with such devastating consequences for so many people that there is no possibility of clearing up the mess within the court system itself. The government looks like it's going to have to pass an act of parliament to blanket reverse the mess and award compensation wholesale, simply to achieve any kind of positive outcome for the victims within their lifetimes (never mind on a fast timescale). If that isn't a clear indication that our adversarial system of courts isn't totally and utterly ****ed, I don't know what is.
Okay, there's been some very bad behaviours within the post office, but the whole idea of a court and judge is to protect people from bad cases, not roll over and let them proceed without an iota of curiousity. And it's very worrying that none of the enquiries seem to be asking the question as to whether the adversarial court system is capable of running such cases with such evidence in play. It clearly isn't (it's not even capable of fixing its own messes), but I can't see any changes to it being recommended by any of the enquiries.
How We Stand Abroad
Not very well I'm afraid. I know of a social services case in England that lead to an English family being granted asylum in France by the French courts, to protect them from malicious and repeated prosecution by an English social services department. That case was long, drawn out and eventually became an occassional topic in the more serious sunday newspapers. It culminated in the matter eventually getting to an extradition hearing in France at which (for the first time) the English social services were obliged to submit sound, incontrovertible evidence that would actually get tested. They rolled out the bunkum they'd been putting before the English courts, and the French court immediately (like, within minutes) dismissed the case and issued an order protecting the family in France and put out a Europe-wide order cancelling the Euro arrest warrant that the English system had issued and forbidding any renewal of it. (I happen to know the solicitor for the defence here in England).
That how bad our courts can be. Our continental neighbours have had cause to protect our own citizens from our own court processes that were being manipulated by a rouge actor (an "expert") within a social services department. The inquisitorial system means that the court / judge themselves are expected to form an opinion, which I think means they get pretty good at doing so, and can therefore smell bullshit a mile off (as happened in this case).
"A clerk in a law firm presses the right button on the wrong file on a government web portal. The court issues an order as a result, seemingly with zero measures in place to check for error. That, frankly, sounds terrifying."
The judge refers to that in their ruling. They said that to get to the final screen on the system where divorce can happen with "the 'click of the mouse'" they would have had to pass through several earlier screens, "each of which prominently bears the names of the parties".
they would have had to pass through several earlier screens
The judge has never had to do application support, (of course), or critical-system support, but still, it's sad to see in a judgement that kind of ignorance about the way people and systems operate.
Users click through screens. Systems which cannot allow clicking through screens are built to prevent that by adding 2nd party or 2nd factor input -- repeated data entry is an example. Systems which do allow click-through should be backed up by systems to handle the inevitable errors.
"The judge refers to that in their ruling. They said that to get to the final screen on the system where divorce can happen with "the 'click of the mouse'" they would have had to pass through several earlier screens, "each of which prominently bears the names of the parties"."
Fine, but it was still a mistake. And would he say the same if a solicitors firm had had two cases both with surname "Smith", initial "A"? I'm sure hope there's more than just people's names used as the identifier.
If the court system doesn't permit / encourage 2 person verification of data entered, the court needs to accept that occassionally mistakes are going to be made.
Names as identifiers are not great, not even combined with DoB and PoB. I remember reading an article about the problems someone was having with the UK credit reference system that decided to use name, dob and pob as a unique identifier for a person. Turned out some guy shared all these details with someone else, and was permanently afflicted by their attrocious banking behaviour.
"A clerk in a law firm presses the right button on the wrong file on a government web portal. The court issues an order as a result, seemingly with zero measures in place to check for error. That, frankly, sounds terrifying."
I wonder if there's an "Are you sure?" query to be clicked too?
《....Schrödinger's marriage?》
Given that involves a cat probably not the most politic. ;)
All a bit silly. The parties were to divorce in any case, its just a case of premature ejection from the marital state. It would be more worrying if reflexivity of the relation wasn't preserved viz he wasn't married to her but she was still married to him. (Gendered pronouns did make that easier to state than the usual legal circumlocutions.)
In AU the grounds for divorce are basically irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, after 12 months the divorce will be granted. Financial arrangements and those for dependents are separate matters. If you are seeking a divorce and the other party is uncontactable, the divorce will still be granted which means the other party could be also be unaware of their single status which is not too different from this story.
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