ABSTRACT
Section 15 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 empowers the court to adjourn the case or dismiss the information if the prosecution fails to appear at the time and place fixed for the summary trial. Where a magistrates’ court dismisses an information under s 15 without consideration of the merits of the case because of the non-attendance of the prosecutor, there is no rule of law which prevents the court from dealing with an identical information subsequently laid against the same defendant; the question to be decided is whether the new information amounts to an abuse of process, and so the court must consider what prejudice would be caused to the defendant by the preferment of the new information (Holmes v Cambell (1998) 162 JP 655).
