MR JUSTICE NICKLIN Approved Judgment
MBR Acres Ltd -v- Curtin
obstructed by several protestors. At 15.24, Mr Curtin joins the protestors who are standing in front of the police van. A police officer gets out of the van and speaks to the protestors. The protestors disperse by 15.28 and the van drives off. Mr Manning states that the video evidence shows that Mr Curtin was in front of the van for a little over a minute. Arguably, the actions of the protestors were an obstruction of the highway, but the police did not take any action, perhaps in view of the very short-lived extent of the obstruction. H: The parameters of the Claimants’ claims (1) The case against Mr Curtin 121. At an earlier stage of the proceedings, I made directions that the Claimant must plead, separately, the allegations that they made against each of the named Defendants in their Particulars of Claim. This was to ensure fairness. It was not fair to expect litigants in person to have to grapple with extensive Particulars of Claim – containing allegations directed at “Persons Unknown” – to attempt to identify what, if anything, was being alleged against them specifically. For the purposes of trial, Defendant-specific bundles were required to be provided by the Claimants. Each bundle contained only the allegations and evidence relevant to that Defendant. 122. By the time we reached the end of the trial, Mr Curtin was the only named Defendant who remained. The parameters of the case against him are set by what is pleaded in his Defendant-specific Particulars of Claim. 123. In their pleaded case, the Claimants allege that Mr Curtin, on various occasions, has been guilty of trespass, public nuisance on the highway, interference with the First Claimant’s common law right of access to the highway from the Wyton Site and, finally a course of conduct involving harassment of the First Claimant’s employees (and others in the Second Claimant class). 124. As I will come on to consider (see Section J(2) below), the Claimants advanced allegations against Mr Curtin, both in the witness evidence and at trial, that went beyond the case pleaded against him in the Particulars of Claim. 125. The Claimants’ pleaded case against Mr Curtin relies upon the incidents I shall identify and address in the next section of the judgment when I deal with the evidence. I shall deal with each incident, chronologically, setting out the evidence and stating my conclusions, including, where necessary, resolving any disputed aspects of that evidence. (2) The case against “Persons Unknown” 126. Although the pleaded case against the various categories of “Persons Unknown” included other claims, by the end of the evidence and in their closing submissions following the Supreme Court decision in Wolverhampton , the Claimants had narrowed the claims advanced against “Persons Unknown” to a claim for an injunction against various categories of “Persons Unknown” or, alternatively, a contra mundum injunction, to restrain: (1) trespass (including prohibiting drone flying below 100 metres); (2) public nuisance caused by obstruction of the highway; and (3) interference with the First Claimant’s right of access to the public highway. The Claimants did not
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