Ronald Terance Stocker v Nicola Stocker
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | HHJ Richard Parkes,HHJ Richard Parkes QC |
| Judgment Date | 18 July 2014 |
| Neutral Citation | [2014] EWHC 2402 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ13D06031 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 18 July 2014 |
[2014] EWHC 2402 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
HHJ Richard Parkes QC
(sitting as a Judge of the High Court)
Case No: HQ13D06031
David Price QC (of David Price Solicitors & Advocates) for the Defendant
Caroline Addy (instructed by SA Law LLP) for the Claimant
Hearing date: 16 June 2014
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.
HHJ Richard Parkes QC
This is an application for an order that the claimant should answer a number of requests made in a Pt 18 Request dated 26 March 2014, and that time for service of the defence should be extended until 14 days after provision of the answers.
The application is made in the course of a defamation action brought by Mr Stocker against his ex-wife. Relations between the two of them continue to be very bitter. Mr Stocker appears to be in a relationship with a woman called Deborah Bligh. Ms Bligh was formerly in a relationship with one Eric Roche, with whom she has two daughters.
The claim is simple enough. It is founded on two instances of publication by the defendant. They are an email dated 2 January 2013 sent by the defendant to Eric Roche, Ms Bligh's former partner, in France; and a Facebook exchange between Mrs Stocker, the defendant, and Ms Bligh, which took place on 23 December 2012. It is only the Facebook exchange with which this application is concerned.
The words complained of are only a part of the full exchange, which is said to have been visible to all those who were 'friends' in the Facebook sense with Ms Bligh, of whom 22 are identified. However, Ms Bligh had some 110 'friends', and through them, it is said, the words would have been visible also to a large but unknown number of people who were the 'friends' of Ms Bligh's 'friends'. The words complained of are as follows:
| Nicola Stocker: | I hear you have been together 2 years? If so, u might like to ask him who he was in bed with the last time he was arrested… |
| Nicola Stocker: | Wouldn't bring it up last time I accused him of cheating he spent a night in the cells, tried to strangle me. Police don't take too kindly to finding your wife with your hand prints round her neck. But don't worry you will get a nice watch for Christmas! |
| Deborah Bligh: | why did Terry get arrested |
| Nicola Stocker: | …Which time? |
| Deborah Bligh: | Why has he been arrested??? |
| Nicola Stocker: | Well u know about him trying to strangle me, then he was removed from the house following a number of threats he made and some gun issues I believe and then the police felt he had broken the terms of the non-molestation order. |
| Nicola Stocker: | All quite traumatic really. |
The meanings pleaded are that the claimant:
(1) had tried to kill the defendant by strangling her, for which he was arrested by police;
(2) had also threatened the defendant and breached a non-molestation order protecting her, for which he was also arrested;
(3) had been arrested countless times and accordingly, it was to be inferred, was a dangerous and thoroughly disreputable man.
There is also a claim for aggravated damages, in which Mr Stocker relies on what is alleged to have been the gratuitous nature of his ex-wife's communication with Ms Bligh, and on the fact that Mrs Stocker did not, so it is said, use the private messaging facility on Facebook, but rather posted the words complained of onto Ms Bligh's Facebook page where all Ms Bligh's Facebook 'friends' were able to read them.
According to the witness statement of Julia Varley, made on the defendant's behalf, the claim has a number of unusual features. It is said that the claimant goaded the defendant into defaming him. For example, it is said that on 31 October 2011 the claimant texted her, asking her to make her accusations in public because he needed the money. One case of slander, he said, would not keep him in the manner to which he wished to become accustomed. On 21 December 2012, two days before the Facebook exchange complained of, he texted her in unpleasant terms which I will not repeat but seem all too characteristic of these exchanges on both sides, and concluded that she was 'too clever to get sucked in over the internet'. In what is said to have been the immediate aftermath of the Facebook exchange, he texted her saying that she was going to make some lawyers very rich.
It appears from Ms Varley's witness statement that in late November or early December 2012 the defendant sent Ms Bligh what is called a 'friend request', that is to say a request for Ms Bligh to agree to her becoming one of Ms Bligh's Facebook 'friends'. The reason for this curious request is said to have been that Mrs Stocker's son had started mentioning Ms Bligh, and saying that she would sometimes pick him up from school, and that she had two young children who did not live with her, but with their father in France. Unsurprisingly, it appears that the claimant would not tell his ex-wife much about Ms Bligh, but made certain allegations about the way in which Ms Bligh had been treated by Mr Roche, and in all the circumstances the defendant wanted to know more about the woman who was to be having regular contact with her son. She therefore sent the friend request, which – remarkably, perhaps – was accepted.
The exchange complained of took place on 23 December 2012. At 10.50, the defendant had sent the claimant a somewhat offensive text about Ms Bligh, in the course of which she said that she hoped Ms Bligh would not be anywhere near her son at Christmas. At some point, it appears, between that text and 12.16 (although Ms Caroline Addy, for the claimant, observes that the timings are not certain), Ms Bligh posted a 'status update' on her Facebook page saying that she could not wait to wake up on Christmas Day with her man and his son. The defendant felt that the reference to her son was a provocation, and a cruel reminder that she would be spending a first Christmas morning without him. Mr David Price QC, for the defendant, suggests that it was an obvious and intentional barb directed at his client. If so, she rose to the lure, responding with the question 'Which one of his sons would that be. May be u should be with your own kids'. Ms Bligh responded 'sorry I do not understand your status would you like to phone me i am at home'. The defendant replied 'Not really no'. Thus far, it appears to be common ground that these brief postings would have been visible to Ms Bligh's Facebook 'friends', because, according to Mr Price, they followed the status update, and that is something which is generally visible.
About a minute later, according to Ms Varley's account, Ms Bligh posted what the defendant believed to have been a private message to her saying 'Nicky, you can phone me if you wish'. That was the message that precipitated the exchange of which the words complained of formed a part. According to Ms Addy, it was another 'status update', and would have been as visible to Ms Bligh's Facebook 'friends' as the earlier one. It is the defendant's case that she was not aware that others would have been able to see the exchange, because she believed it was a form of private messaging. It is unclear to me how reasonable such a belief would have been. I have no evidence of what the defendant would have been able to see when exchanging messages with Ms Bligh, and in particular as to whether she would or should have seen that she was posting messages on Ms Bligh's 'wall'. Mr Price suggests that this may be important, because if she was unaware that her digital conversation with Ms Bligh was in effect being overheard by others, that might afford her a defence: he referred to Terluk v Berezovsky [2011] EWCA Civ 1534 at [28] for Laws LJ's preference (in the slightly different context of republication) for a test of liability rooted not in carelessness but in knowing or deliberate action. In other words, he submits, it may be that if she did not know that others were (as it were) 'listening in' to the exchange, she would not be liable for publication to those others. It is not a question which has to be decided now, but liability for unintentional publication to third parties has in the past been thought to depend on want of care (see eg Gatley 12 th ed para 6.18). Whatever the correct answer, the requests for further information go in part, Mr Price says, to Ms Bligh's state of mind, because if she was unaware of the public nature of the exchange, then that might give force to the defendant's case that she also was unaware.
It appears that the defendant contemplates also a potential defence of consent or acquiescence, on the footing that the claimant was inviting the defendant to behave as she did, and that he in some way put Ms Bligh up to provoking the exchange by the claimant; and an application to strike the claim out for abuse of process, it being said to be the 'paradigm' of an abusive claim. That is why Mr Price emphasises the evidence that the claimant referred to wanting her to make her accusations in public, to her being too clever to be 'sucked in' over the internet, and to what he says was Ms Bligh's provocation of the Facebook exchange. It is in that context, and for the purpose of enabling the defendant's solicitors to provide informed advice to the defendant about the substantive merits of those defences, and about the possibility of a Pt 20 claim against Ms Bligh, that the Pt 18 request is made.
I should add that on 26 February 2014 the claim was stayed for 3 months by consent because the defendant was...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Ronald Terance Stocker v Nicola Stocker
...June 2014, HHJ Parkes QC rejected the appellant's application that the respondent be ordered to answer various Part 18 requests: see [2014] EWHC 2402 (QB) and in a judgment dated 10 June 2016, Warby J rejected an application made by the respondent to strike out the defence of consent: see ......
-
Tesco Stores v Ms K Element and Others
...already made and not so as to enable the requester to identify further claims. A similar point is also made in Stocker v Stocker [2014] EWHC 2402 (QB) at paragraph “26. … It is no less fishing to seek further information to assist a party to plead a defence of which she knows something (alb......
-
HRH Prince Khaled Bin Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud v Ronald William Gibbs
...see eg National Grid Electricity Transmission plc v ABB Ltd [2012] EWHC 869 (Ch) at [73] to [74], per Roth J, and Stocker v Stocker [2014] EWHC 2402 (QB) at [27], per HHJ Richard Parkes QC (sitting as a judge of the High 43 Of course each case must depend upon its own facts. As Schiemann ......
-
Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago and Colonial Life Insurance Company (Trinidad) Ltd v Duprey et Al
...seeks to save expense and seeks to ensure that the matter is dealt with expeditiously. 53 In the UK case of Stocker v. Stocker [2014] EWHC 2402 (QB), Judge Richard Parkes Q.C., considered an application for an order that the claimant should answer a number of requests made in a Part 18 [Par......