BL-2023-000713 - Draft Authorities Bundle

“3) during the racing period and the preliminary period, the Company may control … the access over the Downs to the racecourse and the paddock .” And that gives the Company clear rights to control the public access. 38. Subsection 5 provides that the Company may exclude members of the public from walking on the racecourse except for at certain crossing places, which are then provided for, and therefore, by implication, it allows the members of the public to have the benefit of crossing places, but subsection 16 provides:

“ Subject to the provisions of paragraph 5) above, the Company may during the racing period keep closed the crossing places referred to in that paragraph. ”

39. I do not need to read any other provisions of the Act. It is sufficient to record that combining the Company's rights as freeholder with the rights given under that Act, the Company has very significant rights to control the public's rights, what would otherwise be the public ’s full rights of access to Epsom Down. 40. Based on those rights, Mr Maclean says his client is entitled to the injunctive relief to which I have referred in order to protect those rights and to protect his client from the consequences of infringement of those rights. 41. The crossing points, which he is entitled to close except when his clients need to do so, are covered by the injunction and the injunction prevents abuses of the crossing points. Controlling the public's access to areas in which the horses need to go in order to get from stable to parade ring and parade ring to the course are rights and controls which his clients are entitled to impose in the law of trespass and, so far as those areas are within the areas covered by the Act, under the Act as well. Insofar as anyone has had proper admission via a ticket, it cannot sensibly be said that that they are entitled to abuse the contractual rights to enter by stepping beyond those rights and interfering with horses, and that would be a trespass as well. I am satisfied as to that. 42. Based on all that material, I am satisfied that were the acts which the Company fears to take place, they would amount to actionable trespasses and, if a sufficient danger of their being carried out is established, the Company would be entitled to an injunction to restrain them., I am satisfied that as a matter of title, the Company is entitled to the relief sought for the reasons given. 43. I am also satisfied that there is a very serious risk of the trespasses and other wrongs which are foreshadowed by the threats to disrupt the race mmeeting. It is impossible to say exactly what form the disruption will take, and no doubt the protesters will not disclose that in advance. Nonetheless, I am satisfied that the bases covered by the injunctive relief are sufficient, and no more than sufficient, to protect the Claimant Company from foreseeable risks. The injunctive relief, if it were to be successful, would prevent disruption of the races and the danger to life and limb to which I have already referred. Thus far, the Company has gone a long way towards establishing its claim to an injunction.

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