MR JUSTICE NICKLIN Approved Judgment
MBR Acres Ltd -v- Curtin
journey to/from work and having the same protest message shouted through his/her letterbox at home at 3am. 304. My findings mean that the Claimants have failed to demonstrate the element of the tort required under s.1(1A)(a). In consequence, the claim in harassment brought against Mr Curtin will be dismissed. 305. In any event, I would also have found that the Claimants had failed to demonstrate the element of the tort required under s.1(1A)(c). 306. As part of the harassment claim against Mr Curtin, it is the Claimants’ case that Mr Curtin’s intention behind, or the underlying purpose of, the alleged acts of harassment of the First Claimant’s employees (and others in the class of the Second Claimant) was to get them to sever their connection with the First Claimant (for employees to leave, for suppliers to cease business etc). Mr Curtin rejected this allegation on the several occasions when it was put to him during his long cross-examination. 307. I shall give one example of the answers he gave when this allegation was put to him, in the context of the unpleaded allegation of harassment of Mr Manning on 7 September 2021 (see [283]-[285] above): Q: … it was an attempt to intimidate [Mr Manning] because you want to persuade the officers, staff, workers of MBR not to work there, in pursuit of your goal to get MBR shut down?
A:
The case against me – you haven’t spent millions of pounds to stop me trying to persuade people. I’m allowed to persuade people. It’s a legal right for me to --- it’s what protesting is, persuasion.
Q:
Your attempt to persuade Mr Curtin is done by intimidation?
A:
It’s absolutely not my intention the way to close down MBR is to get Mr Manning to leave and then the maintenance man. That’s not – that has never been the thrust of what’s driven me behind my campaigning. It’s going to be a lot more complicated than that to shut MBR down.”
308. I accept Mr Curtin’s evidence. I am not concerned with the evidence of what other protestors have done. Mr Curtin, in the protest methods he adopted, did not pursue the sort of crude intimidation of the First Claimant’s staff that Ms Bolton ascribed to him. He was quite candid in accepting that he wished to see the First Claimant shut down, but he was equally clear about the ways in which that objective could be achieved. K: The evidence at trial against “Persons Unknown” (1) Trespass on the Wyton Site 309. It would be disproportionate to set out the evidence of all the incidents where “Persons Unknown” have trespassed on the First Claimant’s land prior to the grant of the Interim Injunction. By dint of the fact that the First Claimant owns the Driveway at the Wyton Site and part of the Access Land, hundreds of people have potentially been guilty of trespass on this land. Basically, anyone who seeks to use the entry phone outside the
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