Tony Bowden is right on this. The Court of Appeal is bound to follow its own decisions and can depart from them only under very limited exceptions and these were generally laid out in Young v Bristol Aeroplane Co Ltd in 1944. One of these is where a decision has been reached "per incuriam" or through want of care. However, this is interpreted very restrictively to mean where a case has been decided either in ignornace of, or overlooking, a statutory provision or case. That is not the case with Durant. The per incuriam exception does not extend to allowing a later Court to depart from a previous decision merely because the later Court thinks the earlier decision is wrong - the House of Lords has to overrule the dodgy case.
Having said all that, there are still cases where the CA has wilfully refused to follow its own previous decisions, but this is pretty rare. Also, a number of these have been controversial and when the Appeal Court has done this it has normally been rounded on by the House of Lords. There was a spell in the 1970s when Lord Denning tried to push through the view that the CA could and should overrule its own previous cases but he was blocked and criticised over this consistently by the HL, and his own fellow judges in the CA pretty much refused to support him on the view.
Laurence
Laurence W. Bebbington
Law Librarian
Information Services
The University of Nottingham
>>> Tony Bowden <[log in to unmask]> 19/01/04 11:47:22 >>>
On Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 08:26:27AM -0000, Smith, Tony wrote:
> The Court of Appeal frequently changes its mind.
Have you references for this, or examples?
When I studied law we were told there's a set of very restrictive
guidelines for this. For the most part CA rulings are meant to be binding
on itself.
Tony
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