THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE NICKLIN Approved Judgment
MBR Acres Ltd -v- Free the MBR Beagles
credible evidence that s/he threatened to do so in the future. Ms Bolton’s response was that if the injunction does not apply to everyone, those who are not bound by its terms will commit the acts that others are prohibited from doing. In support of her argument, that the Court can and should grant “ precautionary relief ” on this basis, Ms Bolton relied upon Vastint Leeds BV -v- Persons Unknown [2019] 4 WLR 2 [26]-[31]; and Koninklijke Philips NV -v- Guandong Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp Ltd [2022] EWHC 1703 (Pat) [18]-[19], [25]-[36]. She also referred me to two paragraphs of the judgment of HHJ Simon in Thurrock Council -v- Adams [2022] EWHC 1324 (QB) : [27] Mr Simblet [Counsel for one of the named defendants] cautioned against adding together acts of individuals and creating a level of conduct that would justify an order, rather than assessing the conduct of an individual tortfeasor. He suggested that the former might be appropriate where individuals were congregating in one place all of the time, but that was not the case here. He challenged the schedule of named Defendants, their arrest details and the fact that there are so many gaps in them. Mr Simblet contended that there may have been people who committed tortious acts but have not been sufficiently described in evidence so that they could be identified. He said it was a misconception to aggregate actions of a number of people and then create a fourth class of Defendant said to be responsible for “all sorts of inchoate tortious misdeeds”. He suggested that the Claimants had not put forward a case against any individual in any cause of action open to them, noting that this was exactly why the Court of Appeal in Ineos (CA) discharged two injunctions due to the absence of supporting material. In the instant case a claim in trespass can only apply to acts on the highway… [53] Mr Simblet makes a good point that not all protesters have been directly involved in the differing acts complained of. However, I reject the submission that the Court must assess the conduct of an individual tortfeasor, on the basis that one is not dealing with a single group of individuals congregating in one place. In my judgment, a proper analysis of the acts engaged in by protesters entitles the Claimants and the Court to treat as a broad-based composite the Defendants, whose individual actions are intended to contribute to the goal of an alliance that shares a belief in the tactics promulgated by JSO, however loosely connected each person may be to it. Any other approach would neuter the Claimants in the exercise of their statutory duties. I use the word ‘duties’ because it seems to me that contrary to the distinction sought to be made by Mr Simblet between actions of a local authority that are mandatory, such as under the Shops Act 1950 in B&Q Ltd ., and what he characterised as the voluntary nature of the Claimants in bringing the instant proceedings, section 130 HA explicitly creates a duty on the Highway Authority to act in the circumstances envisaged in the section. Although section 222 LGA is framed in a permissive way, one need only contemplate this from the perspective of a powerful challenge in judicial review were a local authority to fail to determine the events of 1-15 April 2022 as sufficient justification for a requirement to act to promote or protect the interests of the inhabitants of their area. This applies both to Thurrock and, in terms of apprehended action, to Essex.
420
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator