MR JUSTICE NICKLIN Approved Judgment
MBR Acres Ltd -v- Curtin
167. Mr Curtin also made the point that it was never suggested by any of the police officers present that there was a problem with the way he was demonstrating. He also stated that he was not wilfully obstructing the drivers’ view down the carriageway. He was demonstrating. He accepted that the performance of the ‘ritual’ meant that the cars were held up leaving the Wyton Site. 168. My findings in relation to the pleaded 13 July 2021 incident are: (1) Mr Curtin trespassed, for a short period, on the Claimant’s land. (2) Mr Curtin (with others) obstructed the vehicles leaving the Wyton Site from gaining access to the highway. As such, Mr Curtin interfered with the First Claimant’s common law right of access to the highway by being part of a group of protestors who stood around and at times in front of the vehicles as they attempted to leave the Wyton Site. The obstruction was short-lived; being no longer than a few minutes. It will have caused only minor inconvenience. Insofar as it is relevant, I am not satisfied that Mr Curtin intended to obstruct vehicle access to the highway when he stood to the side of vehicles. He frankly accepted in cross-examination, that his standing in that position on the carriageway, close to the vehicles, may have meant that the driver of the vehicle’s view of the carriageway was temporarily impaired, but I am unable to reach a firm conclusion about that. In any event, had this been the sole basis for the alleged interference with access to the highway, I would have rejected it. But this incident must be considered as a whole and, with others, Mr Curtin did directly obstruct the vehicles leaving the Wyton Site that day. It was the usual ‘ritual’. (3) To the extent that there was any obstruction of the highway in this incident, it did not amount to a public nuisance, particularly having regard to the limited role played by Mr Curtin. The obstruction was temporary and, applying the test of what amounts to “public nuisance” (set out in [93] above), it affected only a few private individuals rather than the public generally. The only people affected by the obstruction were the employees of the First Claimant who were leaving the Wyton Site. (4) The issue of whether Mr Curtin has engaged in a course of conduct involving harassment must be assessed by considering the full extent of the acts upon which the Claimants rely (and I do so below), but in this individual incident the protest message delivered by Mr Curtin was not, either in the words used or the manner in which it was delivered, inherently harassing. Ms Read simply tried to ignore him and did not say that she was caused distress or alarm either by what Mr Curtin shouted at her, or that his method of address was itself harassing. Employee F did not appreciate being called names – like “ monster ” and “ puppy killer ” – by Mr Curtin but he did not suggest that this name-calling had caused him/her distress or alarm. The alarming part of the protestors’ behaviour, in Employee F’s eyes, was the physical actions of surrounding the vehicles and their general unpredictability; in other words, more a fear of what they might do, rather than what that had actually done. 169. In cross-examination, Ms Bolton asked Mr Curtin questions about alleged obstruction of vehicles arriving at the Wyton Site in the morning of 13 July 2021. This was not included in the Claimants’ pleaded allegations against Mr Curtin.
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