Chima Umezuruike acted for the Appellant at the Court of Appeal in this complex case involving a novel point of law regarding the rectification of an entry at the Land Registry. The Appellant sought to remove from the land register, a legal charge that one Mr T. had created in favour of the Bank. Prior to creating the legal charge in favour of the Bank, Mr T. had been registered as the proprietor of the property in question as a result of a court order which transferred ownership of the property from the Appellant’s father to him on the basis of forged documents which were presented to the High Court.
Before a legal charge can be removed from the land register by the process of rectification, the registration of the legal charge must be a mistake for the purposes of schedule 4 to the Land Registration Act 2002. For it to be a mistake it must be void.
The Court of Appeal held that whilst the forged documents that were presented to the High Court were void, the court order that was based on them was not void because whilst the legal concepts of voidness and voidability form part of the English law of contract, they are inapplicable to orders made by a court of unlimited jurisdiction in the course of contentious litigation. Such an order is either irregular or regular. If it is irregular it can be set aside by the court that made it upon application to that court: if it is regular it can only be set aside by an appellate court upon appeal if there is one to which an appeal lies. Accordingly, neither the registration of Mr T. as the proprietor of the property nor the subsequent registration of the legal charge that was created by Mr T. was a mistake for the purposes of schedule 4 to the Land Registration Act 2002.