Return to Contents
Jersey & Guernsey Law Review – June 2007
BOOK REVIEW
JERSEY INSOLVENCY & ASSET TRACKING by ANTHONY DESSAIN & MICHAEL WILKINS. 3rd edition 2006 ISBN 1901 614 – 28 – X published by Key Haven Publications PLC
1 One approaches reviewing a later edition of any book with trepidation for fear of repeating, rather than contradicting, what more distinguished reviewers have said about earlier editions. I was grateful to read earlier reviews of this work going back to its launch in 1999, at about the same time as I was beginning my studies of Jersey law as a member of the Court of Appeal. I am still a young student of Jersey law and so I came to this work for the first time eager to understand something of the law of insolvency, which in both Islands has been regarded as somewhat idiosyncratic.
2 The new name “Jersey Insolvency and Asset Tracking” reflects the fact that applications for freezing orders have become a frequent feature of life for Royal Court judges, particularly on Friday afternoons.
3 Being a simple Guernseyman, I valued the inclusion of a glossary at the start and read that from A to W, pausing to digest the difference between “Unreported Judgments” and “unreported judgments”. What to me is so important about this book is that it demystifies and explains what the Bailiff of Jersey described in the foreword to the first edition, as essentially an “indigenous product”. Indigenous products in our Island laws are all too often under threat from those who cannot be bothered to understand them, and try to dismiss them as no longer fit for purpose in the hope of harmonisation with an extraneous system with which they are familiar. This is why the skill of authors such as these in explaining clearly their subject is so important. The fact that the publishers have promoted a third edition of this work in such a short time, indicates the great value it has been to practitioners both inside and outside the island. My judgment can be in similar terms to many of my pronouncements in the Jersey Court of Appeal: “I agree” with those who have gone before and extolled this work, greatly improved, as it is, by the additional material contained in the third edition, particularly the analysis of In re Esteem Settlementand the appendix on Guarantees.
4 The Guernsey law of insolvency has developed in a different way. The procedure for foreclosure on Realty (“Saisie”) was simplified in 1952. So far as limited companies are concerned, we have had compulsory liquidation available since 1908. The Sheriff’s Office has therefore not developed to the extent of that of the Viscount. The distinguished Bailiff Sir Havilland de Sausmarez promoted legislation in 1929 to reform the more archaic parts of the law of insolvency and provide a procedure for discharge, which in practice has never been sought by any insolvent. There is an old procedural work written in about 1850 by James Gallienne, who was an Advocate and Comptroller (Solicitor General) until he fell from grace for stabbing a man outside a house of ill repute in Cornet Street. After a further brush with the law for breaking windows in the Grange, he seems to have settled down and in later life served for a number of years as HM Greffier. So far as the modern law is concerned, all we have is a valuable chapter on insolvency in Gordon Dawes’ Laws of Guernsey.
Sir de Vic Carey was Bailiff of Guernsey between 1999 and 2005, and ex officio President of the Guernsey Court of Appeal during that time. He was a judge of the Jersey Court of Appeal between
2002 and 2005 . After retirement from the office of Bailiff he was re-appointed as an ordinary judge of the Guernsey Court of Appeal. He continues to sit occasionally as a Lieutenant-Bailiff in Guernsey and a Commissioner in Jersey.
Return to Contents