MR JUSTICE NICKLIN Approved Judgment
MBR Acres Ltd -v- Curtin
continue to be restrained. I accept that the Claimants have provided evidence of at least one occasion where there has been significant surrounding, obstruction and delay of vehicles further down the B1090 highway. However, none of the Claimants has demonstrated a legal entitlement to restrain that activity. Save in the most extreme cases, it is unlikely to amount to a public nuisance, and I have explained above why I am not prepared to grant a contra mundum injunction to restrain public nuisance. For understandable reasons, the Claimants did not pursue a harassment claim against “Persons Unknown”. It suffers from the same problem as public nuisance; the tort is so fact sensitive as to whether the threshold has been crossed into unlawful behaviour as to make it almost impossible to fashion a contra mundum injunction in acceptable terms. In my judgment, these are simply the inevitable limits of what can be achieved in attempting to control public order issues by civil injunction. 398. For these reasons, I shall grant to the First Claimant a more limited form of contra mundum injunction than that sought by the Claimants. It will restrain future acts by protestors of (a) trespass at the Wyton Site; and (b) interference with the right of access from the Wyton Site to/from the public highway caused by obstructing of vehicles entering or leaving the Wyton Site. Given that contra mundum ‘newcomer’ injunctions remain relatively uncharted waters, I am going to provide that the injunction shall last initially for a period of 2 years, at which point the Court will consider whether it should be renewed, discharged, or potentially extended. 399. Turning to paragraphs 3-5 of the Claimants’ proposed order. (1) It is very important to ensure that those affected by the order are made aware of their right to apply to the Court to vary or discharge it. Anyone affected by the order, which would embrace anyone who is protesting at the Wyton Site, or is intending to do so, is entitled to apply to the Court or vary or discharge the order. For that purpose, they must have an immediately available and effective method of being provided with all of the evidence that was relied upon by the Claimants to obtain the contra mundum order. (2) It is not appropriate to provide for any sort of alternative service of the injunction order. It is for the First Claimant to decide how best to give notice of the injunction to those who need to be aware of its terms. In terms of any subsequent enforcement action, the burden will fall on the First Claimant to demonstrate that the terms of the injunction have come sufficiently to the attention of the person against whom the First Claimant wants to bring contempt proceedings. The effect of paragraphs 3-5 of the Claimants’ proposed order would be that, once the relevant steps were completed, the whole world would be deemed to have received notice of the injunction. That would be a palpable fiction. It could even embrace people who are not yet born. Subject to proof of breach of the injunction, it would deliver, practically, a strict liability regime. That is not what remotely what the Supreme Court envisaged, and it is not fair. (3) Mr Curtin’s penalty in the Third Contempt Application 400. When deciding the appropriate penalty for contempt of court, the Court assesses the contemnor’s culpability and the harm caused by the breach. The concept of harm, in contempt cases, includes not only direct harm caused to those who the injunction was
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