THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE NICKLIN Approved Judgment
MBR Acres Ltd -v- Free the MBR Beagles
(2) Initial hearings of the variation application 6. The variation application was originally listed to be heard on 20 June 2022, but it had to be adjourned – see [13]-[17] of the further judgment of that date ([2022] EWHC 1715 (QB)). It was relisted to be heard on 21-22 July 2022. However, the time allocated for the hearing of the variation application had to be reallocated to deal with a contempt application that the Claimants had brought against Gill McGivern (see judgment [2022] EWHC 2072 (QB) (“the McGivern Contempt Judgment”)). The Court was able to make additional time available on 25 July 2022 to hear the variation application, but one day was insufficient, and the hearing had to be adjourned, part-heard, to 7 October 2022. (3) Variations to the interim injunction made on 25 July 2022 7. Pending the adjourned hearing of the variation application, I did, however, accept, at the hearing on 25 July 2022, that some limited modifications should be made to the interim injunction. The affected Defendants did not oppose the changes and they took effect in a revised injunction order of 2 August 2022. 8. The 10 November 2021 order provided, so far as material, that the Defendants (both named and “Persons Unknown”) must not: “… approach and/or obstruct the path of any vehicle directly entering or exiting the Exclusion Zone (save that for the avoidance of doubt it will not be a breach of this Injunction Order where any obstruction occurs as a result of an emergency).” 9. The 2 August 2022 order replaced that restriction with the following prohibitions: “(2) The Third to Ninth and Eleventh to the Twenty-Fourth Defendants MUST NOT within 1 mile in either direction of the First Claimant’s Land, approach, slow down, or obstruct any vehicle which is believed to be travelling to or from the First Claimant’s Land at the Wyton Site. (3) The Seventeenth Defendant MUST NOT within 1 mile in either direction of the First Claimant’s Land, approach, slow down, or obstruct any vehicle: (a) for the purpose of protesting and/or campaigning against the activities of the First and/or Third Claimant; and (b) where the vehicle is, or is believed to be, travelling to or from the First Claimant’s Land at the Wyton Site. (4) The Third, Twelfth, Fifteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-Second Defendants MUST NOT cut, push, shake, kick, lift, climb up or upon or over, damage or remove, or attempt to remove any part of the perimeter fence to the Wyton Site, as marked in red on the attached plan at Annex 1.” 10. In respect of obstruction of vehicles (the subject of the new sub-paragraphs (2) and (3)), evidence of events following the grant of the injunction, particularly that which had been filed by the Claimants in relation to the contempt applications against the Twelfth and Thirteenth Defendants (see [2022] 3 WLR 999), showed that some protestors had adopted tactics of surrounding and/or obstructing vehicles that were travelling to or from the Wyton Site further along the carriageway of the B1090. It had also become
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