Bankruptcy

The subsequent setting aside of council tax liability orders was not a ground for the annulment of a bankruptcy order made in respect of the appellant. So ruled the Court of Appeal, Civil Division, in dismissing the applicant’s appeal against a judge’s order upholding a district judge’s decision by which he had dismissed her application to annul a bankruptcy order.

That order had been made on a petition by the second respondent local authority. The appellant had argued that the bankruptcy order should be annulled because, while the liability orders had been extant at the time of the bankruptcy order, they had subsequently been set aside. The Court of Appeal held, among other things, that the lower courts had correctly concluded that the statutory demand relating to the liability orders had properly been served.

Further, the court ruled that a bankruptcy court should not go behind liability orders, except in the event of fraud or some miscarriage of justice and held that, since