Tina Hamilton v News Group Newspapers Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Warby |
| Judgment Date | 20 January 2020 |
| Neutral Citation | [2020] EWHC 59 (QB) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: QB-2018-000694 |
| Date | 20 January 2020 |
[2020] EWHC 59 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS LIST
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Warby
Case No: QB-2018-000694
Victoria Jolliffe (instructed by Grant Saw Solicitors LLP) for the Claimant
Anthony Hudson QC (instructed by Simons Muirhead & Burton LLP) for the Defendant
Approved Judgment
The claimant was, for a period of months in 2017, a prison officer at Her Majesty's Prison, Wandsworth. She brings this action for libel and misuse of private information against the publisher of The Sun newspaper in respect of an article published in the print edition of The Sun for 28 February 2018 under the heading, “Taming of the Screw – Jail officer quits after lag ‘fling’”, and a similar online article. This judgment contains my determination of the meaning of the articles, as a preliminary issue in the case.
Procedural history
The claim was issued in September 2018, accompanied by Particulars of Claim. Untypically for cases in which the Court is asked to determine meaning, the case has progressed as far as a Defence, served on 13 November 2018, and a Reply, served on 22 February 2019. By October 2019, Amended Particulars of Claim had been served, and in November 2019 the parties agreed that the natural and ordinary meaning of the words complained of should be determined as a preliminary issue. A consent order to that effect was made by Master Davison on 11 November 2019. The Master gave directions, also by consent. These included provision for costs budgeting, directions for the lodging of written submissions, and an order that the preliminary issue should be determined without a hearing “subject to the approval of the Judge that a hearing is not required”.
Written submissions having been lodged, the matter was listed for my consideration on Friday 20 December 2019. I adopted the standard approach to determinations of meaning, by reading the words complained of without knowing what either party said about their meaning, and reaching some provisional views. I then read the written submissions. Having done so, I was satisfied that there was no need for an oral hearing, and I have proceeded to reach a final determination and to prepare this written judgment setting out my conclusions, and reasons.
“Paper” determination
The parties, in drawing up the consent order, rightly recognised that it is always a decision for the Judge, whether to deal with an application without a hearing. The decision must of course be made in accordance with the overriding objective, and the duty to further that objective by active case management. Active case management includes, where appropriate, “dealing with the case without the parties needing to attend at court”: CPR 1.4(2)(j). Relevant considerations, in a case where the parties agree to a matter being dealt with “on paper”, include giving effect to the wishes of the parties. In any event, the Court will have regard to the imperatives of efficiency, economy, and speed. These will often point in favour of a “paper” disposal, but not always. That may be an unsuitable procedure where one or both of the parties is unrepresented. Even where the parties are represented, the Court may form the impression that one or both has missed an important issue. There may be arguments that can best be presented orally, or complexities may emerge which require a face-to-face dialogue, rather than a purely “paper” process. On occasion, it may be a more efficient use of the Court's own resources to hold a hearing. None of these points applied here. As will become apparent, these were relatively short and straightforward articles concerning a single claimant, who is an individual. The issues for resolution are relatively confined. The case has no particularly unusual features.
It is also important, always, to keep in mind the requirements of transparency. These have been considered by me, in the context of applications for final injunctions or undertakings by consent ( PJS v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2016] EWHC 2770 (QB) [1–4]), and for default judgment and summary disposal ( Charakida v Jackson [2019] EWHC 858 (QB) [2019] 4 WLR 66 [8–11]). In Hewson v Times Newspapers Ltd [2019] EWHC 650 (QB) [16–26] the requirements of open justice were considered by Nicklin J in the context of a consent application for the “paper” determination of preliminary issues on meaning. In each of these cases, the Court concluded that it would be consistent with the open justice principle to determine the application without a hearing, providing appropriate measures were taken to ensure that interested members of the public had access to the Court's decision and reasons, and other key materials. In Hewson at [26] and Charakida at [10], the Court suggested that under modern conditions this way of dealing with matters might indeed achieve greater transparency than the traditional method.
In Hewson, Nicklin J held that any concerns about open justice could be overcome by a four-stage procedure: (i) the provision of written submissions; (ii) the preparation in draft of a written judgment based upon those submissions; (iii) the circulation of the draft to the parties in the normal way; and (iv) at the handing down of the judgment in open court, the making available all written submissions that were considered by the Court before making the determination. Subject to contrary argument on some future occasion, that seems to me a satisfactory solution, at least in general. I understand that no third party attended the hand-down in Hewson, but that does not affect the principle. When preliminary issues are dealt with at a public hearing, as is the norm, it is commonplace for nobody other than the parties and their lawyers to attend. Someone who merely attends the hand-down of a judgment arrived at under this regime will probably, as a matter of practice, have greater access to the parties' arguments than a person who attends a contested hearing.
I add that, since the judgment in Hewson, the Supreme Court has further clarified the Court's inherent jurisdiction to provide third parties with access to documents held by a civil Court, including the parties' written submissions and arguments. In Cape Intermediate Holdings Ltd v Dring [2019] UKSC 38, the Court unanimously approved the principles identified by the Court of Appeal in R (Guardian News and Media Ltd) v City of Westminster Magistrates' Court [2012] EWCA Civ 420 [2013] QB 618, and endorsed by the majority in Kennedy v Charity Commission [2014] UKSC 20 [2015] AC 455. Those principles would appear to indicate that the Court should ordinarily be ready to provide a third party, on request, with copies of written submissions lodged for the purposes of a determination of the present kind, if these are still held by the Court. It should not, however, be assumed that such documents will be retained indefinitely. They are not documents which the court maintains as part of its record of proceedings.
The preliminary issue
Often enough, preliminary issue trials encompass issues other than meaning, such as whether any meaning found is defamatory at common law, and whether it is factual or in the nature of an opinion. For a recent example, see Triplark Ltd v Northwood Hall (Freehold) Ltd [2019] EWHC 3494 (QB) [7]. (There may still be cases in which the Court can sensibly try, at the preliminary stage, the issue of whether the publication complained of satisfied the serious harm requirement under s 1 of the Defamation Act 2013. That remains an open question in the light of the decisions of the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court in ( Lachaux v Independent Print Ltd [2017] EWCA Civ 1334 [2018] QB 594, [2019] UKSC 27)). But the Order in this case identifies the single issue for trial as “the natural and ordinary meaning of the words complained of” in each of the articles.
The words complained of
Print version
The print version of the article read as follows (the paragraph numbering has been added):
“TAMING OF THE SCREW
Jail officer quits after lag ‘fling’
EXCLUSIVE by TOM WELLS, Chief Reporter
[1] A PRISON officer quit her job while being investigated for an alleged fling with a lag she was guarding.
[2] Mum-of-two Tina Hamilton, 31, resigned during a probe into claims that she had fallen for burglar Perry Middlemass behind bars.
[3] But The Sun can reveal she has seen the thief, 23, after leaving her job and even visiting him in jail on Valentine's Day.
[4] Last night Tina insisted she quit over “childcare issues” and denied misconduct. She said she was pals with Middlemass as she had “worked” with him at HMP Wandsworth in South West London.
[5] A source said: “The investigation related to an allegation of an inappropriate relationship between Tina and a prisoner. She resigned before it concluded.”
[6] Jail chiefs launched a probe last December after reports of inappropriate behaviour in a cell.
[7] It was referred to Scotland Yard, but cops reportedly ruled there was too little evidence to pursue a criminal case.
[8] Tina, of Plaistow, East London, quit the Prison Service on December 13.
[9] Middlemass, serving seven years, was moved to another jail soon after. A Prison Service spokesman said: “We take all allegations of staff misconduct very seriously.”
The hard copy article was accompanied by photographs of the claimant and Mr Middlemass. The claimant complains of the entire article.
Online version
The claimant also complains of the whole of the online version of the article. The body of that version was identical to paragraphs [1–9] above, and it was also billed as an “ EXCLUSIVE By Tom Wells, Chief Reporter”, but the headlines were different. They were:-
“ Prison Officer quits her job amid...
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