The court was concerned with applications for committal arising out of alleged breaches of several orders, including an order in financial remedy proceedings.
The first respondent submitted that the judgment in the financial remedy proceedings that gave rise to the order he was alleged to have breached was inadmissible in the committal proceedings. He cited Hollington v Hewthorn [1943] KB 587 for the propositions that findings of fact by earlier tribunals are inadmissible in subsequent civil proceedings because they constitute opinion evidence, and findings made to the civil standard in financial remedy proceedings cannot carry any probative value when determining a contempt application to the criminal standard, and therefore should be excluded.
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