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Question

Whether Lord Gill should or should not recuse (stand down)
himself in the causes:

John Parkes v Robin MacGregor & Accountant in Bankruptcy and Cintec
Unity Trust Bank Plc v Martin & Linda Frost

1.Martin Frost believes he should not in Unity v Frost

2.John Parkes believes he should have in Parkes v MacGregor


Background
In 2004, business partners Martin Frost and John Parkes were sequestrated on a cost debt occasioned by an English action, raised by Cintec International Limited against the partnership in 2003 at the Patents High Court. John Parkes disputes the merit of the English decision; both Frost and Parkes dispute the English jurisdiction and the cost quantum.

In September 2005 John Parkes obtained in absence a reduction in his sequestration. This reduction was reponed (appealed) by Robin MacGregor & Accountant in Bankruptcy who were again successful in John Parkes’ subsequent appeal against the reponing decision before the Inner House chaired by Lord Gill. John Parkes is currently seeking leave to appeal to the House of Lords ‘inter alia’ grounds that Lord Gill should not have heard the appeal upon grounds of actual or perceived bias – on Friday 2006-02-10 Lord Gill deferred his decision until Wednesday 2006-02-15 to allow further factual consideration.

John Parkes has a hearing on Monday at 10’oclock 2006-02-13 at Edinburgh Sheriff Court initiated by Cintec against John Parkes, The Accountant in Bankruptcy and Robin MacGregor for the Sheriff court to declare that the Accountant in Bankruptcy and Robin MacGregor have failed in their duty to not to sell John Parkes home and personal assets.

1. John Parkes is opposing Cintec’s Note upon the grounds that:

a) On account of his reduction he is not in sequestration;

b) Even if he was in sequestration such a sell up would be premature because his remedies to escape sequestration have not been exhausted.

2. Not known what the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s or Robin MacGregor’s position is – John Parkes has said that he thinks that both Robin MacGregor and the Accountant in Bankruptcy are floundering and essentially they will kowtow to Shepherd & Wedderburn who are Cintec’s agents and who are understood to be due substantial unpaid fees from Cintec. Cintec in turn, according to informal sources and company accounts lodged at Companies House, are themselves facing possible liquidation due to over £700,000 of costs run up by their lawyers in their dispute with Parkes and Frost.

3. Cintec, or Shepherd & Wedderburn, state that notwithstanding John Parkes reduction or not, Cintec is entitled under current Scottish insolvency legislation to demand that the Accountant in Bankruptcy winds up John Parkes’ estate.


Factors to be considered:
The Parkes and Frost partnership was involved in the anti-terrorist business. Cintec International entered this business and Parkes and Frost raised (in the summer of 2003) an action in the Court of Session, Edinburgh, against Cintec for patent infringement. Almost simultaneously, Cintec raised a similar English action against Parkes and Frost – at a preliminary English hearing in London, the English judge, Lord Jacob, contacted his friend Lord Gill over trial timing and possible jurisdiction. Following this lunch time contact the English trial proceedings continued and the Scottish action was put on the back burner.

On the morning of the English hearing before Lord Jacob the Scotsman newspaper ran articles detrimental to Cintec’s position and favourable to that of Parkes and Frost. Such articles were brought to the attention of the court and founded upon to speed up an English judicial process.

These articles were written by Jeanette Oldham who had previously written a controversial article concerning Lord Gill hinting at Lord Gill possibly giving legal assistance to his gardener’s partner who had been charged with murder. 

Separately, Frost, Parkes and Lord Gill had had input over the Lockerbie or Pan Am disaster.

Lord Gill as an advocate had represented parties prior to his elevation as a judge.

John Parkes due to his explosives acumen had assisted in the crash aftermath and had formulated his own opinions as to the cause.

Martin Frost believes that via a training error with Afghan freedom fighters in the Scottish Borders the British inadvertently shot down the Pan Am flight.

Consequently, he was asked, and he did prepare personal background reports on senior members of the Scottish judiciary. Regrettably, on account of such collated information he in trust passed on the Lord Gill gardener story to Jeanette Oldham which culminated in Lord Gill’s upset and Lord Gill’s lawyers threatening the Scotsman.

John Parkes believes that Lord Gill effectively set him up because Gill wanted to get even with Frost. Furthermore, because Frost had previously fallen out with his lawyers, then Shepherd & Wedderburn, and with Lady Smith there was a Scottish legal ‘fatwa’ against Frost, who he, John Parkes, suffered collateral damage. John Parkes had this view re-enforced via a series of happenings – not least was when Mr Justice Laddie, the High Court judge, who heard the Cintec v Parkes & Frost case and gave costs against Frost & Parkes, admitted privately on tape that he concurred with both the suggestion that his and Lord Jacob’s position lacked in his mind perceived judicial impartiality and that proper ‘first seizure’ by the Scottish jurisdiction had been made. Added to Mr Parkes’s perceived paranoia was that a Mr Ian Smith had been Lord Gill’s clerk at the time of the Lord Jacob and Lord Gill lunch time conversation – Smith and Frost were not friends and so Mr Parkes again considered he was set up in a personal machination to cause Frost harm. Such concerns by John Parkes have grown legs – and rightly or wrongly John Parkes perceives himself to be a victim of a judicial/spook conspiracy in which for vested interest the truth is re-written culminating in him being robbed of his home and his life’s work.   

I understand Mr Parkes position. That said – for reasons apart – I will not seek a different bench to that proposed of Lords Gill, Osborne, and Johnston for this weeks coming summar roll hearing in Unity v Frost.


Martin Frost
2006-02-12
meditations
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