Nursing and Midwifery Council v Alvida Harrold
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Saini |
| Judgment Date | 06 May 2022 |
| Neutral Citation | [2022] EWHC 1048 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: QB-2014-006315 and QB-2014-006316 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
[2022] EWHC 1048 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
THE HONOURABLE Mr Justice Saini
Case No: QB-2014-006315 and QB-2014-006316
Adam Solomon QC (instructed by Fieldfisher LLP for the First Applicant and DAC Beachcroft for the Second Applicant) for the Applicants
Alvida Harrold did not appear and was not represented
Hearing date: 3 May 2022
Approved Judgment
THE HONOURABLE Mr Justice Saini
This judgment is in 5 parts as follows:
| I. Overview: | paras.[1]–[4] |
| II. Procedural Matters: | paras.[5]–[7] |
| III. Legal Principles: | paras.[8]–[9] |
| IV. Factual Outline: | paras.[10]–[43] |
| V. Extension: | paras.[44]–[47]. |
I. Overview
This is my judgment on an application to extend a general civil restraint order (“GCRO”) against Mrs Alvida Harrold (“Mrs Harrold”), the Respondent, for a further two year period from 5 May 2022. The application is made by an Application Notice dated 6 April 2022, issued jointly by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (“the NMC”), represented by Fieldfisher LLP, and the North Bristol NHS Trust (“the Trust”), represented by DAC Beachcroft LLP. I will refer to them collectively as “the Applicants”.
Mrs Harrold was employed by the Trust as a Grade E nurse until her dismissal in December 2005. After her dismissal, the Trust referred Mrs Harrold to her professional body, the NMC, which struck her off its register on 22 October 2009. She remains struck off (having failed in her appeal to the High Court in 2016). Her refusal to accept this fact is the thread which runs through her complaints. As I describe in more detail below, Mrs Harrold has been litigating or attempting to litigate about that fact and related matters since the striking-off. Her conduct involves wide-ranging allegations of dishonesty or discrimination on the part of anyone who opposes her position. She also refuses to accept the result of any proceedings which have been concluded against her.
The original GCRO was made pursuant to CPR 3C PD and the inherent jurisdiction of the Court. Its terms prevented Mrs Harrold from issuing any claim or making any application in the Employment Tribunal, the Employment Appeal Tribunal, any County Court or the High Court without first obtaining the permission of a nominated High Court Judge. A GCRO in these terms was first made against Mrs Harrold by Laing J on 9 May 2016, renewed by Foskett J on 7 May 2018, by Warby J on 6 November 2018 and most recently by Chamberlain J on 6 May 2020.
My outline of the facts below is taken from the earlier judgments of the High Court (in particular, Laing J's judgment [2016] EWHC 1078 (QB), and Chamberlain J's judgment [2020] EWHC 1108 (QB)), as supplemented by the updates provided in the witness statement dated 6 April 2022 of Vanessa Taylor-Byrne of DAC Beachcroft acting for the Trust, and the witness statement of Richard Kenyon, a partner at Fieldfisher acting for the NMC. I have also received a witness statement from Mrs Harrold, as I describe further below.
II. Procedural matters
The GCRO made by Chamberlain J will expire on 5 May 2022. At the conclusion of the hearing before me on 3 May 2022, I made a further GCRO for 2 years, with my reasons to follow. Mrs Harrold had notice of the hearing but did not attend. A few days before the hearing she applied in writing to adjourn the hearing for what she called a “further substantive” hearing to investigate claimed breaches by the NMC of earlier orders. As to her reasons for seeking an adjournment, Mrs Harrold said in an email sent on 29 April 2022 to the Court that she would not be able to attend the hearing set for 3 May 2022 “due to work commitments”. She gave no particulars as to the nature of that commitment or as to whether she had sought permission to attend the hearing from her employer. Mrs Harrold also said in her email that she wanted, at what she termed a “substantive hearing”, to raise with the court “…the continuing abuse of the court process by the claimants and their legal team”. The day before the hearing before me, she sent an email to the court asking for an adjournment for additional reasons. She said “…the court may need to deal with the application as a case of abuse of the High Court jurisdiction processes. The court will need a longer time than 2hrs.30mins to hear all the issues as set out in my witness statement dated 29 April 2022”. She also said that she was seeking legal advice. Having carefully considered Mrs Harrold's application for an adjournment and having heard from Leading Counsel for the Applicants, I explained at the outset of the hearing that I was not satisfied her reasons justified any adjournment. In my judgment, the time estimate was appropriate, and Mrs Harrold has been aware of the hearing for some time. Further, the GCRO I made at the conclusion of the hearing makes express provision for her to apply to the Court to set aside or vary the GCRO. Given the history, I was not willing to allow the GCRO to lapse and to allow Mrs Harrold the freedom to bring proceedings, without judicial scrutiny, until a further hearing on an unspecified date.
Although she did not attend the hearing, Mrs Harrold made a detailed witness statement dated 29 April 2022 opposing the application to extend the GCRO. I have taken that into account, and I have also considered the two Employment Tribunal decisions she sent to the Court (concerning her partially successful victimisation claim against the Trust in 2011 as more fully described in Laing J's judgment). Mrs Harrold's statement was detailed and clearly presented. Regrettably, the contents of her statement (and the updated evidence of the Applicants) show that she has every intention to seek to continue to litigate matters in a way which has led to a number of judges extending the GCRO. She also continues to make wholly inappropriate and unjustified allegations of wrongdoing against the applicants' legal teams including their Leading Counsel, Mr Solomon QC, and Solicitors. These have led to lengthy regulatory processes before the Solicitors Regulation Authority (“SRA”) and the Bar Standards Board (“BSB”) which have shown the complaints to be wholly without merit. Those complaints were plainly vexatious. I will return to these matters below.
For completeness and before turning to the application itself, I note that a recommendation was made on 6 May 2020 by Chamberlain J that the Attorney General should consider making an “ all proceedings” order under s. 42 of the Senior Courts Act 1981. Such an order would not be time limited (unlike a GCRO) and would apply to all courts. That recommendation was expressly endorsed by Lewison LJ on 21 May 2021 who explained (when refusing permission to appeal against Chamberlain J's order): “it is clear that [the Applicants] have been put to considerable expense by the need to renew the GCRO from time to time”. The Attorney General issued a claim for such an order on 18 March 2022. It is not known when the matter will be heard.
III. Legal Principles
CPR 3C PD provides as follows at §4.10:
“The court may extend the duration of a general civil restraint order, if it considers it appropriate to do so, but it must not be extended for a period greater than two years on any given occasion.”
In Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset Constabulary v Gray [2016] EWHC 2998 (QB), at [7], Warby J provided guidance as to the applicable legal principles. I have applied those principles supplemented by the observations of Turner J in Sheikh v Page [2017] EWHC 1772 (QB):
“…where an application to extend a GCRO is made the court would normally expect to see some evidence relating to matters relevant to the period which has elapsed since the GCRO was made or most recently extended as the case may be. Otherwise, the important safeguard of limiting the duration of the period of the making or extension of a GCRO to two years would be liable to be circumvented.”
IV. Factual Outline
Although my focus must be on potential for vexation in the future (based on what has happened since the GCRO), I need to set out the historic matters in order for the renewal application to be put in context. Mrs Harrold's past conduct provides a strong indication as to how she is likely to behave in future. I will seek to follow a chronological approach below but at points will need to divert from that to make the narrative easier to follow.
Mrs Harrold brought a series of claims against the Trust and the NMC, most but not all of which failed (one claim against the Trust succeeded but all claims against the NMC failed). The first substantive consideration of the GCRO was by Laing J: [2016] EWHC 1078 (QB). I will adopt but not repeat the abbreviations used by Laing J who reviewed the entire history and whose findings bind the parties.
The essential facts as found by Laing J were as follows. Mrs Harrold had brought a series of 15 claims against the NMC, the Trust and others, mostly in the Employment Tribunal, including for discrimination, victimisation and unfair dismissal, the last two of which had been stayed pending determination of the application for a GCRO. She also brought appeals and sought review of some decisions and the resulting costs orders. The proceedings had for the most part been determined against her. Laing J summarised in some detail at [38]–[52], Mrs Harrold's successful victimisation claim against the Trust (called “the seventh claim” in the judgment) arising from its referring her to the Trust. The judge also described the...
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