Animal Cruelty in UK Law

I now turn to the possible applicability of CPR 19.6 to the defendants. The defendants include nine individuals and three groups who the claimants allege are unincorporated associations. The evidence about the existence and composition of the eleventh and twelfth defendants is unspecific. There is sufficient to persuade me that those defendants exist as groups and are part of the alleged campaign against employees of the first claimant.

In the result, first, this Final Order will be binding upon “protestors”, that is upon those within the wider ambit of Dr. Gastone's representation. That said, second, it is not enforceable, certainly civilly, against any individual without the express permission of the Court. This reflects a safeguard introduced into CPR 19.6 to counter risks implicit in having a wide and ill defined catchment area in terms of affected persons.

Thus, overall there has been conscious effort on the part of protesters to understand and heed Court orders. Then those protesters who have appeared before me have been courteous and, so far as their principles allow, helpful and commanding of my respect Again, there is good evidence that co-operation with the Police is growing on the basis of mutual trust and all can pay tribute to the Force's determination to act even-handedly.

I recognise that the First Claimants desire to achieve certainty so that the police know whom they may arrest upon the grounds that there has been a breach of the injunction; see section 3(6) of the Act. However, for the reasons I have given, I do not consider that that concern can be met by declaring that the injunction may be enforced pursuant to CPR 19.6 against unnamed persons without their individual circumstances being addressed by the Court.

Given that much of the material that has been displayed in earlier affidavits to me emphasises an intention on the part of the authors never to abandon and give up their campaign, and the clear targeting in those earlier documents of UPS, it seems to me that nothing short of a frank abandonment by the defendants of their campaign would justify a court in regarding there as being at present no significant continuing risk.

There can be no doubt that the attention given to the Camberwell squats in the first place and the subsequent decisions to apply for and execute search warrants at the premises, including the timing of the searches, were heavily influenced by a concern to prevent disruption of the Royal Wedding.

The significance of the principle stated by Hoffmann J in this appeal is this. The terms of the injunction sought in this action are typical of an ASBO and, as already indicated, on the facts of this case they are identical or almost identical to the terms of an ASBO. We have already referred to what is in our view a striking feature of the council's approach in this case, namely that it seeks ASBOs against those under 18 and injunctions in identical terms against those over 18.