NNN v 1. Paul Ryan and Another
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | HHJ Moloney |
| Judgment Date | 23 July 2014 |
| Neutral Citation | [2014] EWHC B14 QB |
| Docket Number | Claim No HQ13X 01096 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 23 July 2014 |
[2014] EWHC B14 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
HHJ Moloney QC (sitting as a Judge of the High Court)
Claim No HQ13X 01096
JUDGMENT IN OPEN COURT
(handed down on 23 July 2014)
It is a fundamental principle that whenever possible justice should be done in open court. On those occasions when the interests of justice would actually be defeated by sitting or giving judgment in open court, the Court will if possible give a short judgment in open court explaining to the press and public the nature of what has taken place and in particular why it has had to derogate from the principle of open justice. (In addition I have given a fuller judgment in private setting out in more detail, by reference to the evidence which cannot be publicly disclosed, why I have reached my conclusions.)
In this case, there are two main reasons why the litigation has been conducted in private and on the basis of the Claimant C's anonymity. First, it concerns confidential information as to his private life, and by its very nature that confidentiality could not be protected if the proceedings had to take place openly. Second, the Defendants had sought substantial payments from C in return for keeping the information secret; this is blackmail, or something very close to it, and it is the long-standing policy of the law that blackmail victims should enjoy anonymity to encourage them, and others in their position, to seek the protection of the law.
There has been a previous open court judgment in this case, that of Sharp J dated 20 March 2013 ( [2013] EWHC 637 (QB)), to which I refer generally, and in particular for her summary of the law governing anonymity which I adopt. That judgment explained why interim relief had been granted.
The case then came before me on 21 July 2014 for the hearing of three applications:
a. the First Defendant D1's application to set aside a default judgment entered against him by Master Cook on 25 May 2014, for failure to comply with an "unless order" of Master Fontaine dated 7 April 2014 requiring him to give disclosure by 21 April 2014;
b. C's application for summary judgment on liability (if D1 was successful in setting aside the existing judgment); and
c. C's application against both Ds for a permanent injunction; (D2 is the subject of a default judgment which he has not sought to set aside, and he has not attended or played any part in the hearing before me).
As to the first application, on investigation of the Court files it emerged that, unknown to Master Cook, D1 had in fact filed a list of documents with the Court as soon as possible after 21 April 2014, which was a bank holiday. He had failed to serve it on C's solicitors as he should have done, but the Order of Master Fontaine was not explicit on this point and it was an understandable error on the part of a litigant in person. Furthermore, it appeared from that list that apart from the papers in the case itself D1 did not in fact have any material documents to disclose, certainly none that were not already in C's hands; given the limited nature of his involvement in the underlying incident, as indicated below, this was not surprising. I therefore concluded that, given the nature of and reason for the breach, and the very limited prejudice in fact caused by it to C, it was a proper case for relief from sanction, applying the now current guidance in Denton v. White [2014] EWCA Civ 906.
The second application, for summary judgment in C's favour, was at the heart of the case. Could C satisfy the Court that D1 had no real prospect of defeating at trial C's claim for a permanent injunction (damages having been waived)? Or, put another way, was there a factual dispute which needed to be resolved at trial before C's claim for an injunction could be decided?
Sharp J has already summarised the essentials of C's case, which are as follows:
a. one night, C had an intensely personal, private and confidential conversation with another person, X;
b. that conversation took place in the hallway of a converted house where X has a flat;
c. unknown to either of them, an eavesdropper recorded a sensitive part of that conversation on a mobile phone;
d. the eavesdropper (now admitted to be D2, who had been a visitor to X's flat) then gave the recording to D1;
e. some time later, D1 went to representatives of C and X and sought a substantial payment in return for not letting the recording become public, as a result of which C obtained interim relief.
It will be seen, that D1 has no independent knowledge of the original incident (other than listening to the recording). Importantly for the purposes of the summary judgment application, his Defence (and D2's witness statement on which D1 would rely at trial)...
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