Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and Another v Mr. Martin Rushton
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mrs. Justice May |
| Judgment Date | 30 March 2017 |
| Neutral Citation | [2017] EWHC 1205 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Claim No. HQ 16 X 03460 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 30 March 2017 |
[2017] EWHC 1205 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London, WC2A 2LL
Mrs. Justice May DBE
Claim No. HQ 16 X 03460
Mr. Adam Solomon (instructed by Fieldfisher LLP) for the Claimants.
Mr. Marc Beaumont (instructed via direct access) for the Respondent.
APPROVED JUDGMENT
This is a Part 8 claim by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), and by Mr. Sean Tompkins on behalf of himself and all officers, employees agents of RICS.
The order sought is a claim for an injunction under the provisions of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. The claimants seek an order against a member of the Association living in France, a Mr. Martin Rushton.
In around 2009 Mr. Rushton and his then wife were divorcing. His wife obtained some financial assistance from a charity called LionHeart. The charity was independent of RICS but had been set up to help RICS members and their families in need. Mr. Rushton became incensed at this charitable provision made for his wife and in 2009 began a vituperous and persistent correspondence with RICS complaining about the charity.
Diane Telford, then Head of Regulation Operations at RICS, wrote initially on receipt of Mr. Rushton's original complaint in 2009. Her response quite reasonably pointed out that LionHeart was a separate entity from RICS; she suggested that his complaints may be better made to the Charity Commission. Mr. Rushton's response was to accuse Miss Telford of cover-up, collusion and corruption. When asked politely to stop sending such long emails with attachments to her, he responded:
"Miss Telford is totally lacking in any honesty, integrity and ethics. She is also part of an orchestrated cover-up".
Correspondence proceeded in the same vein, making allegations against Miss Telford and others. Then Mr. Rushton launched a website, implacablehostility. com, on which he posted publicly the names of Miss Telford and Mr. Stephen Gould together with the allegations of dishonesty, lack of integrity and cover-up.
Miss Telford eventually made a complaint to RICS about the abuse she was receiving from Mr. Rushton and the RICS Disciplinary Panel became involved. Mr. Rushton's website was investigated and, at the end of that investigation, he was disciplined and struck off. As was his right, he appealed and the Appeal Panel in 2013 found that although the RICS Disciplinary Panel had acted throughout in good faith, Mr. Rushton's rights to freedom of expression entitled him to post matters of concern to him. He was reinstated.
Far from being content however, Mr. Rushton was further enraged, it seems, by the failure of the Appeal Panel to make findings of bad faith against Miss Telford, as well as against the members of the original Disciplinary Panel. Mr. Rushton tried, but failed, to get permission to bring judicial review proceedings. Mr. Rushton thereafter enlarged his target group by including the members of the Appeal Panel, accusing them of whitewash and of being a kangaroo court, amongst other things.
A very few examples from a long list will suffice. In an email to Eve Pienaar, the Legal Director of RICS, on the 24 th March 2014:
"You and your friends in the RICS conspiring with your supposedly arm's-length Regulation Department colleagues, exploited your positions of influence, deliberately set out to abuse the RICS disciplinary procedure. You know very well, Miss Pienaar, the Appeal Panel's conclusion is a lie. You know very well it was a corrupt ultra vires abuse of process".
In an email on the 17 th March 2015 to Mr. Tompkins, the CEO of RICS and the second claimant:
"… what Miss Pienaar is attempting to do is conceal from Governing Council members details of the coercion, corruption and cover-up surrounding my case ….. Miss Pienaar then lied to me ….. I expect you to carry out a full investigation and take the necessary disciplinary action against Miss Pienaar".
An email to Miss Pienaar on the 23 rd March 2015:
"Please act with a modicum of integrity, ethics and professionalism and reply to my email".
Then on 24 th March 2015 in an email to Rachel Atkinson, Head of the RICS Regulation Communications:
"Just like so many of your RICS colleagues, you are either incompetently completely misinformed or you are simply a part of the corruption and cover-up.
"Your director Eve Pienaar and staff solicitor Daniel Gutteridge wilfully breached Article 17 of the Human Rights Act when, at the behest of your director Diane Telford, they abused their positions in the RICS and kudos as solicitors when they tried to intimidate me into relinquishing my right to freedom of expression … and sought to force me to censor a publication I had placed in the public domain.
"When Telford realised she lacked any legitimate grounds upon which to force me to relinquish my right to freedom of expression and censor my publication (which exposed how she, the RICS and RICS Regulation Department behaved), she chose to act illegally. She did this by knowingly making false allegations against me to the RICS Regulation Department, accusing me of libelling her and others.
"A biased and conflicted Regulation investigation officer Gary Beggan, who knew Telford was a liar…..
"My complaint against Pienaar has arisen because she has acted in a dishonest and unethical manner ….".
The emails and website postings continued, including postings on Linkedin, a network site widely used and consulted by professionals and potential employers. The postings, like the emails, contain wild accusations of dishonesty and corruption against named individuals. The luckless Miss Telford continued to be named long after her departure from her employment at RICS.
Linkedin postings include the following examples taken, once again, from a very long list. On 26 th May 2015 there is a posting on the Linkedin site entitled: "Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Human Rights abuse coercion, corruption and cover-up". The text includes allegations against a former President of RICS, Mrs Brooke-Smith:
"With her claims Brooke-Smith may be talking the talk for the RICS, but she knows the RICS has spectacularly and corruptly failed to walk the walk.
"Brooke-Smith is an absolute hypocrite because she knows various Directors of the RICS (such as Diane Telford, Eve Pienaar, Gillian Charlesworth and Alistair Milne) along with certain officers of the RICS Executive (such as Sean Tompkins and Robert Mahoney) are currently, and corruptly, doing everything possible to conceal from the RICS membership and the wider public the fact that the RICS director Telford did, conspiring with the RICS supposedly arm's length Regulation Department (particularly the Regulation personnel Gary Beggan, Peter Jones, Sue Ford and Victoria Buckley) a disciplinary hearing panel of the RICS (Roger Wilyman, Peter McCrea and Catherine Audcent) and an appeal hearing panel of the RICS (Mary Symes, Milton McIntosh and Jeff Marston) knowingly act illegally in breach of the Human Rights Act, wilfully ignore established legal principles and flagrantly disregard the contractual obligations the RICS has to me (a person who has a professional membership contract with the RICS).
"Brooke-Smith knows her pal Telford lied ….. I consider the panel members advice was basically coercion and extortion…. Making false allegations in such a manner is perverting the course of justice and constituted gross misconduct on the part of Telford for which she should be immediately dismissed….
"The Regulation Department personnel instigating the disciplinary process …. was not just an illegal abuse of process and perverting the course of justice but, it also constituted corruption……
"In summary the appeal panel members knew the entire process was a corrupt ultra vires abuse of process instigated upon known lies for the purpose of wilfully abusing my common law statutory and contractual rights and freedoms causing the maximum amount of harm and distress to me for having exercised those rights and freedoms…..
"Basically, the 'good faith' untruth was a cover-up".
On the 24 th June 2015 another Linkedin post on the Linkedin site entitled: "£80,000 of RICS resources allocated on illegal activity", including this text:
"the RICS is on record as having instigated disciplinary proceedings by having the now former RICS director Diane Telford knowingly making false accusations….".
Then moving forward – these are examples only — to the 1 st August 2015 another post on Linkedin headed:
"Lying director Diane Telford 'leaves' RICS (this text accompanied by an image of a woman with a Pinocchio-type nose). Diane Telford …. who knowingly lied to provide a spurious excuse for her friends in the Regulation Department to illegally, and maliciously, instigate the RICS disciplinary process against me, is no longer a director of the RICS….
"Telford is just one of 'the many' of her ilk who lurks within the corrupt corridors of power at 10 Great George Street, London (that is the RICS address)…..
"In addition to the RICS and regulation directors, solicitors, officers, staff members, disciplinary hearing panel and appeal hearing panel members who were directly involved in the flagrant illegal abuse of the disciplinary process to which the RICS/Regulations subjected me, the record shows the following persons were also made fully aware the RICS and Regulation were acting illegally and deliberately failing to respect my common law statutory and contractual...
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