High Court Judgment Template

or further order”), but the point is less clear in relation to the order made in the accompanying case of Ms Maughan, which stated that “this order shall remain in force until further order”.

119. More importantly, we are not comfortable with an analysis of Bloomsbury which treats its legitimacy as depending upon its being categorised as falling within a class of case where unnamed defendants may be assumed to become identifiable, and therefore capable of being served in due course, as we shall explain in more detail in relation to the supposed Gammell solution, notably included by Lord Sumption in the same class alongside Bloomsbury , at para 15 in Cameron . 120. We also observe that Cameron was not concerned with equitable remedies or equitable principles. Nor was it concerned with newcomers. Understandably, given that the case was an action for damages, Lord Sumption’s focus was particularly on the practice of the common law courts and on cases concerned with common law remedies (eg at paras 8 and 18-19). Proceedings in which injunctive relief is sought raise different considerations, partly because an injunction has to be brought to the notice of the defendant before it can be enforced against him or her. In some cases, furthermore, the real target of the injunctive relief is not the unidentified defendant, but the “no cause of action defendants” against whom freezing injunctions, Norwich Pharmacal orders, Bankers Trust orders and internet blocking orders may be obtained. The result of the orders made against those defendants may be to enable the unnamed defendant then to be identified and served, and effective relief obtained: see, for example, CMOC Sales and Marketing Ltd v Person Unknown [2018] EWHC 2230 (Comm); [2019] Lloyd’s Rep FC 62. In other words, the identification of the unknown defendant can depend upon the availability of injunctions which are granted at a stage when that defendant remains unidentifiable. Furthermore, injunctions and other orders which operate contra mundum, to which (as we have already observed) newcomer injunctions can be regarded as analogous, raise issues lying beyond the scope of Lord Sumption’s judgment in Cameron. 121. It also needs to be borne in mind that the unnamed defendants in Bloomsbury formed a tiny class of thieves who might be supposed to be likely to reveal their identity to a media outlet during the very short period when their stolen copy of the book was an item of special value. The main purpose of seeking to continue the injunction against them was not to act as a deterrent to the thieves or even to enable them to be apprehended or committed for contempt, but rather to discourage any media publisher from dealing with them and thereby incurring liability for contempt as an aider and abetter: see Cameron , para 10; Bloomsbury , para 20. As we have explained (paras 41 and 46 above), it is not unusual in modern practice for an injunction issued against defendants, including persons unknown, to be designed primarily to affect the conduct of non-parties.

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