MR JUSTICE NICKLIN Approved Judgment
MBR Acres Ltd -v- Curtin
31. Although it is more complicated than this, the issue at the heart of the litigation is broadly whether the method of protest that the Defendants use (or threaten to use) is lawful. Ultimately this is an issue of striking the proper balance between the protestors’ rights of freedom of expression and demonstration against the Claimants’ rights to go about their lawful business. The law does not require a person exercising the right to demonstrate or to protest to demonstrate that s/he is “right” (whatever that would mean), and Mr Curtin is not required to persuade the Court that he is “right” to oppose animal testing. C: The Interim Injunction (1) The interim injunction granted on 10 November 2021 32. The Claimants were granted an urgent interim injunction on 20 August 2021 by Stacey J (“the Interim Injunction”). The return date was fixed for 4 October 2021. I handed down judgment on 10 November 2021. The Interim Injunction Judgment set out my reasons for modifying the terms of the injunction that had previously been granted. The protest activities that had led to the grant of the Interim Injunction are set out in [13]-[23]. In [18], I summarised the evidence as follows:
“A clear picture emerges from the evidence, that the central complaint of the Claimants is the protestors’ activities when people (particularly employees of the First Claimant) enter or leave the Wyton Site. At these times, protestors, including the named Defendants, have surrounded and/or obstructed the vehicles. Their ability to drive off is not only impaired by the physical obstruction of the protestors, but also because placards have been used, on occasions, to obstruct the view that the driver of the vehicle has of the road and whether it is safe to pull out. These incidents have frequently led to confrontation between the protestors and those inside the vehicles, allegedly leaving them feeling harassed and intimidated.”
33. As a temporary solution, I prohibited trespass on the First Claimant’s land and imposed an exclusion zone around the entrance to the Wyton Site ([116]-[119]) (“the Exclusion Zone”). I refused to grant an injunction to prohibit the flying of drones over the Wyton Site, which was alleged to be a trespass ([111]-[115]). The Interim Injunction did not restrain alleged harassment whether by named Defendants or “Persons Unknown” ([118]), and I refused to grant any orders to control the methods of protest adopted by the Defendants ([122]-[128]). 34. So far as concerns trespass and the Exclusion Zone, the material parts of the Interim Injunction, granted on 10 November 2021, were as follows. Paragraph 1 of the Injunction provided: “The Third to Ninth, Eleventh to Fourteenth, and Fifteenth to Seventeenth Defendants MUST NOT : (1) enter into or remain upon the following land: a. the First Claimant’s premises known as MBR Acres Limited, Wyton, Huntingdon PE28 2DT as set out in Annex 1 (the ‘Wyton Site’); and
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