Nursing & Midwifery Council v Alvida Harrold
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Chamberlain |
| Judgment Date | 06 May 2020 |
| Neutral Citation | [2020] EWHC 1108 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: QB-2014-006316 & QB-2014-006315 |
| Date | 06 May 2020 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
[2020] EWHC 1108 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Chamberlain
Case No: QB-2014-006316 & QB-2014-006315
Mr Adam Solomon QC for the Applicants (instructed by Fieldfisher LLP for the 1 st Applicant and by DAC Beachcroft LLP for the 2 nd Applicant)
Mrs Alvida Harrold in person
Hearing dates: 30 April 2020
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
There are two applications before me. The first was made in an application notice dated 9 April 2020, filed 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. The Respondent is Mrs Alvida Harrold, who was employed by the Trust until her dismissal in December 2005. Sometime after her dismissal, the Trust referred Mrs Harrold to the NMC, which in 2009 struck her off its register. She has been litigating or attempting to litigate about these matters ever since.
The object of the Trust's and NMC's joint application is to extend for a further two years a general civil restraint order (“GCRO”), made pursuant to CPR 3C PD and pursuant to the inherent jurisdiction, preventing 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; and to broaden its scope to prevent Mrs Harrold from making complaints to legal regulators against the legal teams from time to time instructed by the NMC and the Trust. The GCRO was first made on 9 May 2016 by Laing J for 2 years. It was extended for 6 months by Foskett J in May 2018 and extended again by Warby J in November 2018 until 6 May 2020.
The second application before me is Mrs Harrold's application, dated 20 April 2020, to discharge the GCRO currently in force.
Background
Because the background to the matters under consideration has been considered in detail on previous occasions, there is no need to set it out at any length. 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). An interim CRO was made by Blair J on 23 January 2015. The application for a GCRO came before Hamblen J at a hearing on 23 July 2015, at which Mrs Harrold was represented by counsel (Claire Darwin) and solicitors. Hamblen J considered as a preliminary issue whether there was jurisdiction to make an order restraining Mrs Harrold from bringing proceedings in the Employment Tribunal. In a judgment handed down on 31 July 2015, he noted that CPR 3C PD conferred no such jurisdiction, but held that an order restraining a person from bringing proceedings in the Employment Tribunal could in principle be made under the court's inherent jurisdiction, or alternatively under s. 37 of the Senior Courts Act 1981 (“the 1981 Act”): [2015] EWHC 2254 (QB); [2016] IRLR 30. At [37], he concluded his judgment by saying that “whether or not it is appropriate to do so in this case will involve a detailed consideration of the facts.” Mrs Harrold was not present at the handing down of the judgment. Her counsel was. An exchange took place between the judge and Mr Solomon (then and now, counsel for the NMC and the Trust). There is a transcript of what was said. Some of it was inaudible, but the transcript records the judge as saying:
“…it seems to me that on the further hearing, the court is going to need to be addressed in more detail in relation to these hearings [sc. the proceedings brought by Mrs Harrold which were said to be TWM] than it has in the past… I mean whether it is an evidential matter or a submission matter. It is up to you… I think you are going to need to go into more detail than you are currently listing, as I see it.”
Mrs Harrold has disclosed an email sent by Claire Darwin on the same day, reporting the result of the hearing to her instructing solicitors. It included the following:
“[Hamblen J] said that since there has been no TWM finding, the court may need more evidence about the detail of the cases below. In particular, that the court would need a good understanding of what was before the courts below, and that the court would be helped by a more detailed analysis of the reason why each case was dismissed.
He said that AH's witness statement went through each claim, and that this was much fuller. Whereas C's evidence merely recorded the results of each hearing, and this may not be enough.”
Hamblen J was not available for the adjourned hearing. That fell to Laing J. Mrs Harrold was represented by different counsel, this time directly instructed. Laing J's judgment ran to some 139 paragraphs: see [2016] EWHC 1078 (QB), [2016] IRLR 497. The essential facts as summarised 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 CRO. 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. Although the Employment Tribunals did not have occasion to consider whether these claims were totally without merit (“TWM”), because there was no jurisdictional reason for them to do so, Laing J did have to consider that question. She found that many of Mrs Harrold's claims, both against the NMC and against the Trust, had been TWM. The fourteenth and fifteenth claims either sought to revive grievances in respect of which decisions had already been made or made claims which were not remotely likely to succeed: they too were TWM. Laing J concluded that the test for the making of a GCRO was met. An application for permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal against Laing J's decision was itself refused as TWM by Sales LJ.
On the basis of Laing J's finding that the fourteenth and fifteenth claims were TWM, the Trust and the NMC applied to the Employment Tribunal to list those claims for dismissal. Mrs Harrold resisted that application. EJ Livesey granted the application, dismissed the claims and ordered Mrs Harrold to pay a contribution towards the Trust's and the NMC's costs. This prompted Mrs Harrold to seek permission under the GCRO (i) to appeal against EJ Livesey's decision, (ii) to reopen the GCRO claim on the basis of what she alleged was “new evidence” and (iii) to bring a new ET claim for unlawful direct racial discrimination, victimisation and racial harassment against the Trust and the NMC. Mrs Harrold made clear in a telephone conversation with a solicitor at DAC Beachcroft that she intended to pursue the third of these claims against both the NMC and the Trust and their representatives.
In the light of this, an application was made to extend the GCRO for a further two years. Foskett J granted an extension for an initial period of 6 months, whereafter it would continue for a further period of 18 months unless Mrs Harrold had by a particular date set out in writing why it was no longer required. Mrs Harrold filed written submissions, which were considered by Warby J on 6 November 2018 without a hearing. He ordered that the GCRO remain in place until 6 May 2020. He gave short reasons for that order, which included the following:
“The thrust of the Respondent's submission is that the original GCRO of 2016 was obtained fraudulently. The arguments and evidence in support of that submission have all the flavour of the kind of vexatious conduct that must have been the foundation of the GCROs against this Respondent. But I do not need to determine whether those arguments have any merit. They are backward-looking arguments. As such they are not reasons why a GCRO should not be imposed or ‘is not required’ for the future.”
Meanwhile, Mrs Harrold's appeal against her striking off by the NMC had been heard by Jay J after a very long delay. It was dismissed: [2016] EWHC 3027. An application for permission to appeal against that judgment was refused, also by Sales LJ.
An account of what has happened since Warby J's order is to be found in the third witness statement of Anna George. Ms George is an employed barrister working for DAC Beachcroft. She has been involved with these proceedings since before the first application for a GCRO. On 16 November 2018, Mrs Harrold made representations to the court responding to Warby J's order and providing reasons why the GCRO should not have been extended. On 28 February 2019, Mrs Harrold made two sets of submissions. The burden of these submissions, which were addressed to Warby and Laing JJ, was to show that the decisions to make the GCRO and to extend it were wrong. On 10 March 2019, Mrs Harrold emailed the court indicating that these submissions had been intended to support an application to set aside or revoke the GCRO. The first submission was attached again, together with five other documents. A few seconds later, Mrs Harrold resent the email attaching nine documents in support. On 28 July 2019, Mrs Harrold notified the court that an application would be made to reopen the decision to refuse permission to appeal the GCRO made by Laing J.
Nothing further was heard until February 2020. On 22 February 2020, Mrs Harrold emailed Ms George. She...
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Nursing and Midwifery Council v Alvida Harrold
...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 ......