MR JUSTICE NICKLIN Approved Judgment
MBR Acres Ltd -v- Curtin
(“the Interested Parties”). I gave the Interested Parties an opportunity to file written submissions for the final hearing. 6. I received written submissions from Counsel instructed by Liberty, dated 3 May 2024. 7. I also received a letter, dated 30 April 2024 from Friends of the Earth (“FoE”). FoE expressed concern, due to their limited resources, of the risk that an adverse costs order might be made against them. In their letter, FoE stated that it had made an application for a Protective Costs Order in a civil claim brought in 2019 against “Persons Unknown” in a fracking protest case. The application was rejected, and FoE were ordered to pay £4,500 in costs. Because of these funding concerns, and also because FoE’s campaigning objectives do not embrace the protest at the Wyton Site, FoE did not file written submissions. They did, however, send a copy of the written submissions, and a witness statement of David Timms, FoE’s Head of Political Affairs, dated 25 November 2022, which had been filed with the Supreme Court in the Wolverhampton case. In their covering letter, FoE said:
“In Wolverhampton , the Supreme Court rejected our submissions as to the availability of persons unknown injunctions as a matter of principle, but our submissions may include relevant considerations for the Court in terms of criteria and the procedural safeguards for persons unknown injunctions in the protest context. In particular, the evidence of Mr Timms refers to our own experience of the serious chilling effect of these injunctions, in terms of their deterrence of lawful protest including lawful, peaceful, direct action protest. We would stress that the latter is a recognised and legitimate part of freedom of speech and assembly protected by the common law and Articles 10/11 ECHR.”
8. I am very grateful to both Liberty and Friends of the Earth for their submissions, which I have considered in writing this judgment. 9. I consider the Wolverhampton decision in Section M of this judgment ([333]-[362] below). In brief summary, prior to Wolverhampton , the previous method of attempting to restrain the activities of ‘newcomers’ depended upon the ‘newcomer’ becoming a party to existing litigation by doing some act that brought him/her within one or more categories of defendant who were party to the litigation and upon whom the Claim Form had been deemed to be served by some method of alternative service authorised by the Court. The Supreme Court swept this away and instead sanctioned the use of contra mundum injunctions in limited circumstances. 10. Following the Wolverhampton decision, at the hearing on 7 May 2024, the Claimants sought an injunction against various categories of “Persons Unknown” or, alternatively, a contra mundum injunction, to restrain certain acts. In some respects, the Wolverhampton decision allows the Court to adopt a more straightforward approach and an opportunity to make any injunction the Court grants much clearer and easier to comprehend (see [353]-[362] below). 11. Finally, this judgment also resolves a contempt application brought by the Claimants against the only remaining individual defendant, John Curtin, which was heard on 23 June 2023 (see Sections D(3), G and O(3); [52]-[53], [109]-[120], [247]-[253] and [400]-[407] below).
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