Npv v Qel
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | The Honourable,Mr Justice Nicklin |
| Judgment Date | 28 March 2018 |
| Neutral Citation | [2018] EWHC 703 (QB) |
| Date | 28 March 2018 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ18M01160 |
[2018] EWHC 703 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS LIST
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
THE HONOURABLE Mr Justice Nicklin
Case No: HQ18M01160
Adam Speker (instructed by Carter-Ruck) for the Claimant
The Defendants did not attend and were not represented
Hearing date: 27 March 2018
Judgment Approved
Yesterday afternoon I granted an interim non-disclosure and harassment injunction against the Defendants. The application was heard in private and made without notice to the Defendants. The order I have made, unless varied or discharged in the meantime, will continue until the application can be relisted on notice to the Defendants for further consideration by the Court on 12 April 2018. I indicated that I would give a reserved judgment explaining my reasons.
Background
The Claimant is a successful businessman. He is married. Until late last year, the First Defendant was an employee of a business. She held a customer service role and consequently met members of the public during her work. In early 2017, she met the Claimant in the course of her employment. Thereafter, the Claimant and the First Defendant met socially for a drink in the Autumn of 2017. By doing so, the First Defendant broke rules that prohibited contact between employees and customers. She was suspended and became subject to a disciplinary process. The Claimant supported the First Defendant through this process. The relationship between them developed into a sexual relationship and they had sexual intercourse on several occasions.
Whilst the disciplinary process was still ongoing, the First Defendant resigned as an employee. The Claimant gave her some financial support. Increasingly, however, the First Defendant became more demanding. She told the Claimant that she thought that she ought to receive compensation for losing her job. In December 2017, the Claimant and the First Defendant met, and the First Defendant told him that she thought that, as he was partly to blame for her losing her job, he ought to “help” her financially. The Claimant initially refused what he saw as demands for money. During the evening following their meeting, the Claimant received two telephone calls from the First Defendant. She said that she was giving him one last opportunity to help her in the way she wanted, or he would risk the consequences. The Claimant again refused to make any payment.
Some ten days later, the Claimant received a telephone call from someone claiming to be a journalist who said that he had information about his affair with the First Defendant and that he was preparing to publish an article about it. The Claimant says that he did not believe that the person was in fact a journalist; rather, he thought the caller was someone connected with the First Defendant who was being used by her to exert pressure on him to meet her demands.
Matters developed from there leading ultimately to the Claimant concluding that the threats that the First Defendant was making were credible and that she was threatening him with exposure unless he paid her money. She demanded a very substantial sum. Perhaps unwisely, the Claimant gave in to these demands. He paid the sum that had been demanded in return for the First Defendant signing a strict confidentiality agreement (“the Confidentiality Agreement”).
Separately, the First Defendant had threatened her former employer with employment tribunal proceedings for unfair dismissal. No such proceedings appear to have been commenced, although the Claimant states in his evidence that the First Defendant renewed her threats to do so in February or March 2018. The Claimant did not immediately link the two issues.
On 21 March 2018, the Claimant received a telephone call from the Second Defendant. He gave only a first name and stated that he worked for a media agency, which he would not identify. The Second Defendant told that Claimant that he was working on an article about powerful people who abused their positions and that he intended to cite the Claimant as an example. The Second Defendant sought a meeting with the Claimant. Rather than attend the meeting himself, the Claimant sent two people on his behalf to meet the Second Defendant on 22 March 2018 (“X” and “Y”). Various meetings or discussions that took place with the Second Defendant after this point have been recorded and transcripts provided to the Court.
At the meeting on 22 March 2018, the Second Defendant said:
“… what I want to tell you is – time is really essential because there has been some sort of agreement that this will come out this weekend. So, erm, at the moment it's 100% control by me but if it goes beyond the weekend… then I will have no control over it.”
Although he ultimately claimed not to be working with the First Defendant, it was clear that the Second Defendant had in his possession documents that he showed to A and B that could only have come from her, in particular messages that had passed between the Claimant and the First Defendant during their short relationship. The Second Defendant told X and Y that the First Defendant intended to bring a claim against her former employers in an employment tribunal and that the Claimant would be named in what would be public proceedings. The Second Defendant said:
“… before all of this is going to be published I mean… it will be too late to reverse because it comes out. What I'm offering you is to stop all this.”
By “ all this” he appears to have meant both the employment tribunal claim and the supposed article that the Second Defendant claimed to be preparing.
When asked whether, for a certain sum of money, “ this can all go away” the Second Defendant said: “ Yes”. X said that they would need to discuss the issue with the Claimant and a further meeting was arranged for the following day.
On 23 March 2018, the Second Defendant had a further meeting with X and Y. The Second Defendant said: “ … you told me… this is some form of extortion or blackmailing – that's not the case and it's not true” before then saying: “ All I'm doing is… I'm trying to do a favour to… I could have kept quiet about it and just sold it.” This is doublespeak. The conversation moved on and the Second Defendant indicated that he was seeking a payment of more than £100,000, even £150,000, in order not to take the material to the newspapers (even a broadcaster) that he said were interested in publishing a story. The Second Defendant denied that he was a criminal, accepting instead the suggestion by Y (made perhaps ironically) that he was simply a businessman. Later, the Second Defendant stated:
“But you say to me I am trying to extort but no, if I was trying to extort or blackmail I would say ‘I will send copies of this to your friends, to your family, to your business, to your associate, to your business enemy, to people around you’. This is what is called ‘extortion’ but I am not going to do this, and I will never do this because this is criminal, and I am not going to incriminate myself for something that is (inaudible)… What I do is outsource stories and put them to people who are interested today. Extortion is different you can define extortion (inaudible)”
On 26 March 2018, Y and another person acting on behalf of the Claimant (“Z”) spoke to the Second Defendant on the telephone for approximately 30 minutes. During the call, the Second Defendant again denied that he was attempting to blackmail the Claimant. However, the context and the balance of the call gives cause to doubt that. At one point, relatively early in the conversation, the Second Defendant said: “ I'm not here to blackmail or extort”, but then followed that immediately with: “ I just have an opportunity, uh, a story. And I thought that it would be in his interest to inform him before this story comes out if he's interested to stop it that's up to him. In fact, I'm doing him a favour.”
Throughout the meetings and conversations, the Second Defendant attempted to distance himself from any connection with the First Defendant. During this telephone call he suggested at one point that he had “ no contact whatsoever to her”. That is to be contrasted with the documentation and information that he had and, importantly, during this telephone call his clear indication that he knew about the Confidentiality Agreement. It is difficult to see how he could have obtained these documents and information if it had not come from the...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
AA v Persons Unknown
...[2018] EMLR 19. National Provincial Bank Ltd v Ainsworth [1965] AC 1175. Norwich Pharmacal Co v C & E Commrs [1974] AC 133. NPV v QEL [2018] EWHC 703 (QB); [2018] EMLR 20. PML v Persons Unknown [2018] EWHC 838 (QB). Polly Peck International plc v Nadir (No. 2) [1992] 4 All ER 769. Robertson......
-
Cameron v Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company Ltd
...1775 (QB) (defamation); Middleton v Person Unknown [2016] EWHC 2354 (QB) (theft of information by hackers); PML v Persons Unknown [2018] EWHC 703 (QB) (hacking and blackmail); CMOC v Persons Unknown [2017] EWHC 3599 (Comm) (hacking and theft of funds). Cases decided in the second context ......
-
Soj v Jao
...Ms O's interests in circumstances where she has been accused of blackmail but not yet afforded the opportunity to put her side of the case: NPV v. QEL [2018] EWHC 703 (QB), [2018] E.M.L.R. 20, at [17]. 4.3 Thirdly, anonymity has the advantage that the court can then explain rather more of ......
-
BVG v Lar
...payments to him over a period of years. 24. Two recent cases, LJY v Persons Unknown [2017] EWHC 3230 (QB) (Warby J) at [2], [29]–[30] and NPV v QEL [2018] EWHC 703 (QB) (Nicklin J.) at [26] provide authority for the proposition that the presence of a prima facie case of blackmail based on ......
-
Cybercrime and blackmail – court remedies and GDPR
...evade identification, and “If they fail, punishment for contempt of court would then loom large”. Footnote: 1 NPV v QEL & anr [2018] EWHC 703 (QB). Alex Mobbs) { window.onload = func } else { window.onload = function () { existingOnLoad(); func(); } } } ...