GYH v Persons Unknown
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Julian Knowles |
| Judgment Date | 01 February 2018 |
| Neutral Citation | [2018] EWHC 121 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ17XOL1368 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 01 February 2018 |
[2018] EWHC 121 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Julian Knowles
Case No: HQ17XOL1368
Gervase De Wilde (instructed by Cohen Davis Solicitors) for the Claimant
The Defendant(s) did not appear and were not represented
Hearing dates: 23 January 2018
Judgment Approved
This is an application by the Claimant, GYH, for the final determination of her claim for an injunction and for damages under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (‘the PHA’). For reasons which will become obvious, the Claimant has the benefit of orders preventing publication of her identity, and other matters. The hearing was the return date of the application following a hearing before Warby J on 14 December 2017. On 19 December 2017 Judgment was handed down granting an interim injunction ( GYH v Persons Unknown (Responsible for the Publication of Webpages) [2017] EWHC 3360 (QB)) (‘the Judgment’) and an order granted pursuant to the Judgment (‘the Order’). The Order provided by para 5 for a mechanism for deemed service of the claim form and that the Claimant should then apply at the return date ‘for default judgment and/or final determination of the claim’.
As I have said, the Claimant's claim is under the PHA and was issued under Part 8. After obtaining the Judgment and the Order, it came to the attention of the Claimant's legal team that by CPR r 8.1(5), where a claimant uses the Part 8 procedure s/he may not obtain default judgment under Part 12. However, Practice Direction 8A provides at para 8.1(1) for the Court on the hearing date may proceed to hear the case and dispose of the claim. I discuss that further below.
Accordingly, the Claimant now applies by application notice dated 22 January 2018 for:
a. An order that her claim for an injunction and award of damages is allowed, by way of disposal of her claim. She submits that in light of the findings in the Judgment, that there is no real prospect of the Defendant(s) successfully defending her claim as it is set out in her claim form and the evidence filed in support of it when it was issued.
b. The granting of her claim for damages on the same basis, with assessment to be stayed (she is still attempting to identify the Defendant(s), and asks that the assessment be stayed, with damages to be assessed if she is able to identify him/them).
The factual background
I gratefully adopt the following summary of the factual background from the Judgment:
“1. The claimant applies without notice to the defendant for an interim non-disclosure order to restrain what she alleges is a campaign of harassment. The campaign consists mainly of the publication of various items or categories of personal information or purported information about the claimant. These include allegations that the claimant has HIV/AIDS, and other information or purported information about her sexual life, and her physical and mental health. It is the claimant's case that the allegation that she has HIV/AIDS is false, as is some of the other information about her.
2. Such information or purported information has been, and continues to be, published online at several locations. The claimant's case is that the publications have caused her considerable distress. They are said to amount to harassment by the misuse of private information. The claimant also maintains, as part of her claim, and as part of her argument in support of an injunction, that some of them are both defamatory and untrue. She relies on other more recent conduct as forming part of the same campaign.
…
18. The best way to summarise the claim is to set out the relevant parts of the Details of Claim contained in the Claim Form, to which I have added paragraph numbers. The Claim Form describes the parties as follows:
“[1] The Claimant is a transgender woman who works as an escort, and who provides sexual and companionship services to her clients under a work name (“the Services”). She is an active user of social media and maintains a Facebook profile, a YouTube Channel and a blog.”
[2] The Defendant is the unknown person responsible for conduct and a series of publications set out in more detail below, and thought to be resident in this jurisdiction. The Defendant is identified by description.
19. The Claim Form goes on to make the following factual allegations:
“[3] Around 4 December 2015, the Claimant received a text message from an unknown person claiming to be a student who wished to meet her socially, but not to pay her for the Services. The Claimant declined to meet the unknown person and the text message conversation deteriorated into abuse, including the allegation that the Claimant spreads sexually transmitted diseases. The Claimant received anonymous telephone calls around this time which also directed abuse of a similar kind towards her.
[4] Shortly following the exchange of text messages with the unknown person, the Claimant was targeted by a wide-ranging campaign of online harassment, in which information was posted on websites in relation to both her legal and work names. The Court will be asked to infer that the same unknown person was responsible for the text messages, the phone calls and the website postings.
[5] The websites in question relate to the provision of sexual services for money, and to sex and pornography specifically relating to transgender women (“the Websites”). They target the Claimant, ensuring that they come to her attention, and to that of anyone searching for either her legal or work name on the internet. They do so by: using her work name in their URLs, headlines and other areas where such usage is likely to have an effect on the Websites' prominence in search results; using pictures of the Claimant (often altered in an offensive manner); and by publishing highly specific and identifying personal information about the Claimant's background, legal name, sexuality, and provision of the Services.
[6] The publication of the Websites is persistently harassing of the Claimant, and they contain a number of very oppressive and unpleasant features beyond those which target her set out above, including: (1) the purported private information that the claimant is mentally ill, is anorexic, practices unsafe sex with her partner, and has STDs, including HIV; (2) the defamatory and seriously harmful allegation that, when offering the Services, the Claimant does so notwithstanding her infection with STDs and/or HIV, and the associated allegation that she practises...
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