Dr Robin Rudd v John Bridle
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Warby |
| Judgment Date | 10 April 2019 |
| Neutral Citation | [2019] EWHC 893 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ16X02674 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 10 April 2019 |
[2019] EWHC 893 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS LIST
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
THE HONOURABLE Mr Justice Warby
Case No: HQ16X02674
Guy Vassall-Adams QC and Emma Foubister (instructed by Leigh Day) for the Claimant
James Fairbairn (of Dentons UK and Middle East LLP) for the Defendants
Hearing dates: 7, 8 and 11 March 2019
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
Introduction
This has been the trial of a claim for remedies under the Data Protection Act 1998 ( DPA), in which the claimant relies on the rights to subject information conferred by s 7 (also known as subject access), the rights to prevent processing conferred by s 10, and the right to compensation afforded by s 13.
The claimant has made subject access requests (“SARs”), and maintains that the responses are inadequate. He seeks orders pursuant to DPA s 7 compelling one or more of the defendants to provide further disclosure of information. He has served notices (“s 10 Notices”), requiring the defendants to cease processing personal data which relates to him. He complains that the s 10 Notices have not been complied with. He seeks orders enforcing these demands. And he seeks compensation for alleged contraventions of the requirements of the DPA.
The defendants' case is that most of the data sought are exempt from subject access; that the claimant has received all the information to which he is entitled under the statute, and more; that neither of the defendants should be required to provide anything else, or ordered to comply with the claimant's s 10 Notices; and that there is no pleaded or evidential basis for awarding any compensation.
The parties
The claimant, Dr Rudd, is a medical doctor who specialises in the science of exposure to asbestos, including chrysotile, or “white asbestos”, and the causal connections between such exposure and the development of mesothelioma, lung cancer and other diseases. He is a consultant physician with specialist accreditation in respiratory medicine and medical oncology. He has a special clinical and research interest in asbestos-related diseases and other occupational respiratory diseases. Until 2006, he worked in the NHS at the London Chest Hospital and St Bartholomew's. He has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals. He is recognised as one of the UK's leading experts in the science of asbestos-related diseases. Most relevantly, over 35 years he has given expert evidence in many cases in the United Kingdom in which claimants have sought damages for mesothelioma, lung cancer, asbestosis and pleural disease allegedly caused by exposure to asbestos, as well as in other claims for compensation for respiratory disease. His evidence has been cited or referred to in a number of first-instance and appellate decisions. His evidence in this present action is that “the links between white asbestos and cancer are … very well established” such that “… the consensus view in the scientific community has long been clear that chrysotile … causes all the diseases associated with asbestos exposure ….”
The first defendant, Mr Bridle, has been involved with the manufacture and use of chrysotile and asbestos cement products used in the building industry containing the fibre for some 50 years. Now 79, and retired from full time engagement in the business, he has more recently been active in advising and campaigning on issues relating to the links between asbestos and mesothelioma, lung cancer and other diseases. He is not a doctor, or a scientist. The evidence does not disclose what qualifications he holds. But he has the honorary title of Professor, conferred by the Council of the Research Scientific Institute of the Occupational Health of the Russian Academy of Medical Science. He has been active under the banner Asbestos Watchdog, describing himself as its “Principal”. His witness statements in this action include some commentary on what he calls “the scientific debate regarding Chrysotile Asbestos”.
The second defendant (“the Company”), is controlled by Mr Bridle and his son, Christopher Bridle. It appears to have taken over an asbestos consultancy business first started by Mr Bridle and his wife in 1993. The Company was added as second defendant to this claim, in the light of the Defence filed by Mr Bridle, which suggested that the “likely” position was that any personal data of Dr Rudd were being processed by the Company and not him.
The factual background
White asbestos has been banned throughout the European Union since 2005.
As may already be apparent, the background to the action is a profound dispute or difference between Dr Rudd and Mr Bridle concerning the role of asbestos in causing mesothelioma and other diseases, and (specifically) Dr Rudd's conduct in his role as an expert witness for claimants in actions for damages for disease attributed to exposure to asbestos cement products.
Each side has claimed that the other has misconducted itself, and these proceedings. The claimant pleads that Mr Bridle has been engaged, with other persons whose identities are not currently known, in a calculated attempt to discredit and intimidate him; and that Mr Bridle and the Company have put up a false and misleading case in answer to this claim. Three specific historic matters are relied on in a section of the Particulars of Claim headed “Relevant Background”:
“5. In September 2014, the First Defendant made a complaint about the Claimant to the General Medical Council, alleging that expert reports prepared by the Claimant in court proceedings falsified the risks to health associated with chrysotile asbestos and chrysotile asbestos products, in order to claim compensation on behalf of patients suffering from mesothelioma (the “complaint”). In making the complaint the First Defendant was acting on behalf of, and was funded by, the asbestos industry. In January 2016, the GMC dismissed the complaint, deciding that it did not meet their threshold for investigation.
6. The First Defendant also made allegations about the Claimant to the then Justice Secretary, Mr Michael Gove MP and to other Members of Parliament, alleging that the Claimant is involved in a “conspiracy” with various claimant law firms in which he provides false evidence about the risks associated with exposure to chrysotile asbestos (the “allegation to MPs”). In so doing, the First Defendant was acting on behalf of, and was funded by, the asbestos industry.
7. In August 2015, the First Defendant was involved in the preparation of a letter sent to the Claimant by law firm Fisher Scroggins Waters LLP, acting on behalf of unnamed representatives of manufacturers of white asbestos in Thailand (the “solicitor's letter”). The solicitor's letter asked the Claimant to provide “the evidential basis for his opinion that asbestos cement is capable of being a cause of malignant mesothelioma in humans”. The letter stated that the unnamed manufacturers were suffering ongoing loss and damage as a result of “the persistently adverse reporting of the risks from chrysotile products”. The solicitor's letter was written on behalf of, and was funded by, the asbestos industry.”
Dr Rudd's overall case is set out in paragraph 8 of his Amended Particulars of Claim:
“8. The First Defendant is engaged in attempts, funded by the asbestos industry, to discredit the Claimant as an expert witness and/ or to intimidate him from continuing to act for claimants in mesothelioma cases. Further or alternatively, the same may properly be inferred from the facts and matters pleaded at paragraphs 5 to 7 above.”
Other formulations of the claimant's case have gone further. In a 2017 witness statement the claimant's lawyer, Harminder Bains, a Chartered Legal Executive at Leigh Day, describes Mr Bridle as “dishonest”. Dr Rudd has exhibited press cuttings to his witness statement, in which Mr Bridle is described by the journalist and activist George Monbiot as a “charlatan” with convictions for trading standards offences. In opening and closing argument at this trial, Counsel for Dr Rudd have alleged that the attempts to discredit him of which he complains are not only “inaccurate”, and “false”, but also “malicious”.
The defence case is, in summary, that the claim was initially brought against the wrong defendant (the data controller being the Company), and has been pursued at disproportionate cost, and in an unnecessarily aggressive way, the motives being “seemingly” to punish the defendants for challenging the claimant's publicly stated opinions on the health risks associated with the use of asbestos cement products. The defendants' analysis, as presented by Mr Fairbairn, is that the core of this case concerns a matter of opinion, in which Mr Bridle disagrees with Dr Rudd's views about the risks of chrysotile asbestos cement. It is suggested that the claims under DPA ss 10 and 13 are based on the proposition that “by challenging [Dr Rudd's] views the defendants thereby discredit him and cause him distress”. This, the defendants suggest, is a misconceived attempt to shut down legitimate “debate” on a controversy which is of considerable public interest. That is how Mr Fairbairn seeks to present his clients' position.
Mr Bridle himself, in his witness statement, professes to accept that Dr Rudd may be both honest and right: “I do not of course dispute Dr Rudd's entitlement to his view. Nor do I say he is wrong”. His witness statement suggests that his position is that Dr Rudd has failed to take account of some relevant...
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