MR JUSTICE NICKLIN Approved Judgment
MBR Acres Ltd -v- Curtin
262. In short, the evidence of these witnesses, is not relevant to the claim brought against Mr Curtin personally. 263. When he was cross-examined, Mr Curtin agreed that, on 21 June 2022, he had operated a drone above the Wyton Site, and he had used it to observe what some of the workers were doing on site. The drone, he said, weighed 249 grammes and was flown by him at a height of 50m. His evidence was that it was better to fly the drone at a height at which it was not noticed by anyone at the Wyton Site. He said he can tell the height of the drone from its controls. The weight, Mr Curtin said, was important because there are regulations which govern the flying drones that weigh more than that. Those regulations were not explored at the trial. Mr Curtin said that his primary interest in using the drone was to monitor what was going on at the Wyton Site and specifically the movement of the dogs. Mr Curtin also accepted that, in the past, there had been occasions when the drone had crashed on the site. 264. In response to questions asked by me, Mr Curtin confirmed that he knew of 4 or 5 other people who had regularly flown drones over or in the vicinity of the Wyton Site and there were possibly between 30-50 people who had flown drones occasionally the identity of whom he did not know. He said that he did not start flying a drone until about a year into the protest activities (i.e. around June 2022). 265. Rather than concentrating on this single alleged incident on 21 June 2022, Ms Bolton’s cross-examination ranged widely and included putting to Mr Curtin evidence from the Claimants’ witnesses about use of drones generally. That was not helpful, not least because Mr Curtin is not the only person who has flown drones over the Wyton Site. It confused general evidence – which is only potentially relevant to the claim made for relief against “Persons Unknown” – and the specific evidence relating to Mr Curtin’s drone use. Ms Bolton indicated that the Claimants do not have any evidence – beyond that relating to the incident on 21 June 2022 – of Mr Curtin operating a drone on any other occasion. 266. I accept that, as a matter of principle, it is legitimate for Ms Bolton to explore not only the past incident of drone usage on 21 June 2022 alleged against Mr Curtin but also whether, absent an injunction, Mr Curtin threatens to fly drones in the future that would amount to a civil wrong. But even that exercise needed to focus clearly upon the acts of Mr Curtin which give rise to the credible risk that, without an injunction, he will commit a civil wrong. What is impermissible is to attempt to advance a case against Mr Curtin based on historic drone usage when the Claimants cannot establish that the relevant incident was one in which he was operating the drone. The Claimants cannot, for example, establish that Mr Curtin was the person responsible for the incidents of drone flying – reported in the general evidence given by some of the witnesses (see [260] above) – where the drone was alleged to have been flown as low as head height. 267. On the contrary, Mr Curtin’s evidence, which I accept, is that he typically flies the drone at 50 metres, not least because he hopes that, at that height, it goes unnoticed. In the Claimants’ general evidence, advanced against “Persons Unknown”, Ms Pressick produced evidence relating to a further drone incident where an image obtained from the camera on the drone was posted on the Camp Beagle Facebook page. That image showed some information which included “H 50m”, which she interpreted (I believe correctly) that the drone was being flown at a height of 50 metres.
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