THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE NICKLIN Approved Judgment
MBR Acres Ltd -v- McGivern
basis, is a limited - but necessary - measure to provide effective protection to the rights of the Claimants.
16. As it is usually impossible to serve an injunction personally on “Persons Unknown”, the 10 November 2021 Order extended the permission granted to the Claimants to serve the Injunction on the Fifteenth to Seventeenth “Persons Unknown” by the same method of alternative service as had been permitted to serve the Claim Form (see [8] above). 17. The Injunction has been modified (and extended) by subsequent orders of 18-19 January 2022 and 31 March 2022. These orders have added new Defendants to the claim, both named and further categories of “Persons Unknown”, but the material prohibitions (as set out in [12] above) have remained the same. The Order of 31 March 2022 contained the following provision as to alternative service of the Injunction: “7. Pursuant to CPR 6.15, 6.26 and 6.27, the Claimants are permitted to serve this Order on the … Fifteenth to Seventeenth … Defendants by: (a) affixing copies (as opposed to originals) of the Application Notice and this Order in a transparent envelope on the noticeboard opposite the First Claimant’s premises at [the Wyton Site]; (b) the documents referred to in [(a)] above shall be accompanied by a cover letter explaining to the Defendants that they can access copies of (i) the evidence in support of the Application; and (ii) the skeleton argument and note of the hearing at which this Order was made at the dedicated share file website at [1st Dropbox link given]. The letter will also contain an email address and telephone number at which the Defendants can contact the solicitors for the Claimant and arrange to be provided with an email copy or a hardcopy of the documents referred to in paragraphs 7(a) and 7(b) above. 8. The deemed date of service for the documents referred to in paragraphs 7(a) and 7(b) above shall be one working day after service is completed with paragraphs 7(a) to 7(b) above.” 18. At no point has Ms McGivern been a named Defendant in the underlying proceedings. C: The Contempt Application 19. On 20 June 2022, there was a case management hearing in the underlying proceedings. The main item on the agenda for that hearing was an application by the Claimants to vary and widen the terms of the Injunction. As a result of there emerging the real possibility that unrepresented named Defendants might be able to secure, pro bono, the services of a QC to represent them, the hearing was adjourned to 21 July 2022 (see [2022] EWHC 1715 (QB) [12]-[18]). Ms McGivern attended the hearing on 20 June 2022, remotely, via CVP. At that stage she attended the hearing in her capacity as a solicitor. Ms McGivern told me:
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