BP Collins: Simple and straightforward requests
The High Court has imposed a suspended prison sentence on a former executor who failed to comply with court orders by not providing information to a law firm.
Buckinghamshire-based BP Collins, which acted as replacement executors through its trust corporation, applied to commit Michael Newton for contempt of court after he breached undertakings to the court.
Sir Anthony Mann, sitting as a High Court judge, said he would be “minded to accept” that Mr Newton “did not demonstrate contempt for the court in the sense of disdain for the court”.
However, having seen Mr Newton in the witness box being cross-examined, his approach “borders on at least the reckless”.
The judge went on: “I am not quite convinced that he was being deliberately obstructive, but I do not consider that he did his honest best in order to comply with his undertaking.”
Mr Newton had done “a three-year BTEC in estate management”, which “demonstrates that he is not a man without a degree of intelligence”.
Sir Anthony said he was “perfectly capable of understanding, and did understand adequately, his obligations”.
While it was not established “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the former executor was being “deliberately misleading”, he was “seriously culpable to a degree which would correspond in my view to recklessness”.
Had counsel for BP Collins Trust Corporation (BPC) not proposed a three-month suspended sentence, the judge “might have been minded to provide for a longer suspended sentence”.
The High Court heard that Michael Newton was one of four brothers. He and one of his brothers, Ralph, were appointed executors by their father, when he died in 2019, but had “fallen out” with the other two.
The latter pair applied to the court to have their brothers removed as executors in 2022, and Master Clark ordered in 2023 that they should be replaced by the law firm.
She further directed that Michael and Ralph should, within 14 days of service of the order, render an account of the administration of the estate and deliver up all documents relating to it to BPC.
Sir Anthony said it appeared that Michael and Ralph “failed to comply with that order and that led to a prior contempt application”, resulting in an order by His Honour Judge Kramer who “received an admission by Ralph and Michael admitting they were guilty of contempt”.
HHJ Kramer “went on to record an apology and to record that they had by then complied with that order”. Michael and Ralph undertook that they would “respond within 14 days to any requests for information and documents” made by BPC concerning their father’s estate.
The law firm wrote to Michael in May 2025 over whether he, who on his own admission had been in charge of obtaining rent from rental properties his father owned, had properly accounted for the rent.
BPC asked, among other things, for a list of the properties involved and the amount of rent received.
After Mr Newton failed to respond, BPC repeated the request in October 2025, reminding him about his undertakings, before applying to commit him for contempt of court the following month.
The first hearing of the application led to him providing another undertaking to the court and Sir Anthony said the information provided pursuant to this was also inadequate.
He rejected Michael’s argument that any response to a request, even an unhelpful or abusive one, met the terms of the first undertaking.
“But that cannot have been the intention of the parties,” he said. “It cannot have been the intention of the judge when he received the undertaking. It is not appropriate to construe the undertaking as literally as that.”
Counsel for Michael “submitted that a lot of the problems with this application lay in the fact that BPC were not detailed enough and explicit enough in how they wished the information to be presented”.
Sir Anthony responded: “I am afraid this submission completely misses the point. BPC’s requests were simple and straightforward.”
Had matters not moved on and Mr Newton provided some of the information, he would likely have received an immediate jail sentence.
The judge said he did not consider that a financial sanction in the form of a fine to be sufficient.
“This was a serious and a second contempt of court. I remind myself that Mr Newton has a track record in the sense that Judge Kramer found, and indeed had the benefit of an admission as to, a prior contempt.
“I do not know what that is, but it is an unfortunate background for a second contempt. Mr Newton does not seem to have learnt from his first experience that he needs to comply with court orders.”
He was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, on condition that he provide the missing information within 21 days and continued to comply within the suspension period with his undertaking to provide information reasonably requested by BPC.
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