Bruno Lachaux v Independent Print Ltd/ Evening Standard Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Sir Michael Tugendhat |
| Judgment Date | 18 December 2015 |
| Neutral Citation | [2015] EWHC 3677 (QB) |
| Date | 18 December 2015 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ14D05024 HQ15D00344 |
[2015] EWHC 3677 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Sir Michael Tugendhat
Case No: HQ14D05024
HQ14D05025
HQ15D00344
Adrienne Page QC and Godwin Busuttil (instructed by Taylor Hampton Solicitors) for the Claimant
David Price QC of David Price Solicitors and Advocates for the Defendants
Hearing dates: 8th and 18th December 2015
Sitting as a Judge of the High Court
By application notices in each of these libel actions the Claimant applies for an order for the delivery up of documents ('the Documents') which he claims are the subject of legal professional privilege ('LPP') but which have been obtained by the Defendants from his former wife, Ms Lachaux, in breach of what he alleges is a duty of confidentiality owed to him by her, and by the Defendants. He also seeks an injunction to restrain the Defendants from using the information in the Documents, in particular using it in these two libel actions.
In order not to defeat the purpose of these proceedings (as I would, if I were to disclose the contents of the Documents in this judgment), it is necessary that I refer to the Documents only in the most general terms, and that I refrain from including in this judgment anything that might enable a reader to infer what the contents of the Documents are. Having regard to the fact that the applications concerned information said to be confidential, I directed that the hearing be in private. For reasons that I gave in an ex tempore judgment at the start of the hearing, I was satisfied that it was necessary to make such an order, if the purpose of the proceedings was not to be defeated. I also acceded to a further application by Ms Page, namely that Mr Coad of Lewis Silkin, acting for AOL, and Ms Lachaux, who was present in person, should each be precluded from attending this hearing. I heard submissions from each of them before reaching this decision.
The main constituent of the Documents is a copy or draft of a letter which the Claimant sent in January 2011 to a French avocat practicing in Paris. That recorded some remarks of the French avocat which he said she had made to him in a telephone conversation. He also set out instructions on which he sought from her advice in respect of the breakdown of his marriage and the future arrangements to be made for the young child who had been born of their brief marriage (prematurely, on 4 April 2010). There is no dispute that the Documents were supplied to the Defendant by Ms Lachaux, and that they derived from a computer to which she obtained access (see para 11 below), nor that (subject to the issue of confidentiality) LPP originally attached to the Documents.
The issues are, broadly, as to whether the Documents were confidential as between the Claimant and his wife, whether she and the Defendants acted in breach of any duty of confidentiality, whether any duty of confidentiality that may originally have existed has survived subsequent disclosures by Ms Lachaux to third parties, and whether, if the Claimant succeeds on all those issues, the court should exercise its discretion to grant an injunction in the particular circumstances of this case.
It is not contended by the Defendants that, if LPP applied to the Documents, the Claimant has waived the privilege. It is not suggested that he himself has disclosed the Documents to anyone other than his own legal adviser, nor that he has consented to the use to which Ms Lachaux and the Defendants have put the Documents. Nor is it suggested that the Documents were created in furtherance of any fraud, or as part of any proposal to mislead any court.
The Claimant was born in 1974 in France. He is an aerospace engineer who has at all material times been working and living in Dubai. He met Ms Lachaux, then Ms Shukur, née Aman, in New Delhi in 2008. She was then, and is now resident in England. They made a pre-nuptial agreement in February, under French law, and married in February 2010 in Old Marylebone Town Hall, London. They lived together in Dubai. He commenced proceedings for divorce in Dubai on 2 May 2011. In due course the Dubai court pronounced that the marriage between the Claimant and Ms Lachaux was dissolved, and it awarded custody to the Claimant. The breakdown of their marriage can hardly have been accompanied by greater acrimony. It appears that one source of difficulty for the couple was that Ms Lachaux's visa did not permit her to work in Dubai, and she made trips away from Dubai, during which the child remained in Dubai.
Two of these libel actions were commenced on 2 December 2014 and the third on 23 January 2015. They, and a related action against AOL, the publishers of the Huffington Post, have been the subject of a number of judgments of this court. On 11 March 2015 Sir David Eady handed down a judgment on the meaning of the words complained of in these two actions: [2015] EWHC 620 (QB). I adopt his description of the action, and set out his decision. The words complained of were published by The Independent on and from 24 January 2014, by The Evening Standard on and from 11 February 2014, and, in the case of the Huffington Post, from 20 January 2014. Sir David Eady found that the words complained of in these two actions bore the meanings attributed to them by the Claimant, and (subject to some qualification) the meanings in which the Defendants contended they were true (the Claimant does not complain of all of these). It is sufficient to set out the following passages from his judgment (in which Ms Lachaux is referred to as Afsana, and in which Rabbhi and Shabbir Yahiya are references to her adult sons by a previous marriage):
'1. There are before the court two libel actions brought by a French national, Bruno Lachaux, against respectively Independent Print Ltd and Evening Standard Ltd. He complains of articles appearing in The Independent and the Evening Standard newspapers, both in hard copy and online, which are very similar in content and for present purposes can conveniently be considered together. The complaint relates to publication both in this jurisdiction and in Dubai…
15. I do not quite see where the phrase "cynically taken advantage" is to be found in the article. It is not suggested, for example, that he chose the Emirati system, from a number that were available to him, specifically to disadvantage Afsana. It is difficult to see from this article what other system of law was open to him, given where the persons concerned were living. There is, moreover, no express reference to "Sharia" in the Independent article. It may (or may not) be a matter of general knowledge, but if it is external to the article one might expect to see it brought in to support an innuendo — if this were necessary to establish a particular defamatory meaning. In my view, however, it is not. Nevertheless, the Defendant is entitled to plead (and in due course prove) simply that the Claimant was content to use a system of law which discriminates against women — since that is to be found in the article and does not need to be embroidered with rhetorical phrases like "cynically taken advantage"…
39. Subject to relatively minor points, my findings on the natural and ordinary meanings of the articles accord with those pleaded by the parties. In the interests of greater clarity, although at the risk of tedium, I shall set out the natural and ordinary (including inferential) meanings for each article as I have found them to be. There is inevitable duplication, since I am keeping as close to the wording of the parties as I can, and the Defendant's meanings are expressed in his pleader's own words, as I have explained….
(b) The Evening Standard
41. The Claimant:
i) became violent and abusive towards his ex-wife Afsana within months of marrying her, beating her and leaving her with bruises on at least one occasion;
ii) assaulted Afsana in public on custody visits relating to their young son;
iii) attempted to snatch their son on one custody visit, leaving him with a badly bruised head;
iv) callously and without justification snatched their son from out of his pushchair in the street (and has never returned him);
v) subjected Afsana to the injustice of facing jail in Dubai for "abducting" her own child, when in truth she had only fled with him to escape the Claimant's violent abuse;
vi) having chosen to obtain a divorce in a Sharia court, also used Emirati law and its law enforcement system, which discriminate against women, in order to deprive Afsana of custody of and access to their son Louis;
vii) hid the child's French passport and refused to allow him to be registered as a British citizen, as Afsana wished;
viii) was violent, abusive and controlling and caused Afsana to fear for her own safety;
ix) caused her passport to be confiscated thus for her to be trapped in the UAE;
x) threatened to report Rabbhi and Shabbir Yahiya to the police for aiding a kidnap if they came to Dubai;
xi) caused Afsana to go on the run with Louis;
xii) obtained custody on a false basis and also initiated a prosecution of Afsana in the UAE, which was founded upon a false allegation of abduction, and which gave rise to the risk of a lengthy prison sentence there.
On 7 July 2015 the Claimant made his first witness statement to be adduced in the trial of preliminary issues. The main issues were whether the publications by the Defendants, and by AOL, of the words complained of, in this jurisdiction and Dubai, have caused or are likely to cause sufficient harm to the...
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