to recover the seized documents; a claim for damages was also made. The Petition was based upon an alleged wrongful exercise by the Attorney General of his discretion under Section 24 of the Act.

This Petition provoked an Answer dated 18th September 1996 in which the Attorney General raised the following points of law:

"1.1 It is a long established principle that the Court has no Power of judicial review over the excise of the Attorney General's discretion in relation to decisions taken by the Attorney General in the execution of his public office.

"1.2 Further or in the alternative, the Petition of Doleance seeks damages where no common law right to claim damages has been pleaded in accordance with Section 44 (2) of the High Court Act 1991".

The parties then agreed to have point 1.1 above tried as a preliminary issue and the case came on for hearing before the Learned First Deemster at Douglas on 20th December 1996. After hearing detailed submissions from Mr. Morris on behalf of the Attorney General and Mr. Conti for the Petitioner (which for reasons which will become apparent below we do not need to restate or summarise here) Deemster Corrin said "…I am driven to the conclusion that there will be cases, albeit uncommon and perhaps undiscovered where this Court will consider examining the discretion of the Attorney General under a Petition of Doleance. I therefore rule that there is no absolute bar from this Court reviewing administrative or executive decisions of the Attorney of the Isle of Man".