[2009] EWHC 3017 (Admin)

The criminal justice system required robust case management, and an application to adjourn a trial would be refused unless it was necessary and just. The prosecution was not to think that it would always be allowed at least one adjournment of a trial, and could not rely on its own failures as good and compelling reasons for an adjournment. Where magistrates had wrongly ordered a defendant's trial to be adjourned because prosecution witnesses had failed to attend, that decision was quashed and the defendant acquitted.

DC (Elias LJ, Openshaw J)

28/10/2009