BL-2021-002235 - [2025] EWHC 2367 (Ch)

I directed that the applicant in the contempt application be asked whether it wished to respond to or comment upon this latest application by the respondent. (I will have to come back to this direction.) I received a short written submission dated 12 September 2025, which I have read. Amongst other things, that submission says that

“2.

… There is nothing in that witness statement that merits any evidential response from Klotho.

[ … ]

5.

Klotho’s position in respect of the Part 7 Claim will be that it is vexatious and totally without merit and should therefore be summarily dismissed. It would be surprising if that were not also the position of the other putative defendants.

6.

The total lack of any merit in the Part 7 Claim is underlined by the statement in the claim form that: ‘The claim does not seek to re-litigate the 2011 Share Purchase Agreement or 2012 Settlement Agreement, which are background only.’ The 2022 order which Mr Stanford now seeks to have set aside, the Ambrose Order, simply gives effect to what Mr Stanford agreed when he executed those agreements.”

On 14 September 2025, the respondent produced a short “Note” in reply to the contempt applicant’s written submission. This says that the contempt applicant “avoids the core issues”, namely (i) the allegation that the order of 5 April 2022 was procured by fraud, and (ii) the allegation that the family trust was excluded from the proceedings leading to that order, in breach of CPR rule 19.2(2). It says that a sentence for contempt or a civil restraint order would not validate the 2022 order, cure the exclusion of the family trust, or “displace statutory classifications under POCA 2002”. It further says that it would be wrong and inconsistent to certify the present application as totally without merit. It denies that the contempt applicant is suffering any prejudice through further delay.

It then goes on to say this:

“6.

The Court’s Invitation

I am grateful to His Honour Judge Matthews for recognising that other parties are directly affected and for inviting their comments. That request was issued by judicial email via the Listing Office on 12 September 2025 and will be recorded on CE-File. It is therefore a judicial communication, not informal correspondence.

The invitation was directed to Proskauer Rose LLP (Mr Steven Baker, Mr Steven Davis, Mr Ira Bogner, and Mr Daryn Grossmann); to Lion Capital LLP (Mr Lyndon Lea and Mr Robert Darwent, partner); to Ernst & Young LLP (Ms Anna Anthony, Mr Peter Reynolds, and Mr James Lovegrove); to Aztec Financial Services (Jersey) Limited and NALA AS Bidco Limited (Ms Kristin Holmes, Mr Mandeep Panasar, Mr Graham Tester, Mr Sean Hagerty, Ms Kathryn Purves, Mr Edward Moore, Mr James Duffield, and Ms Lynsey Magee); to the directors of AllSaints Retail Ltd (Mr Peter Wood, Ms Catherine Jobling, and Ms Elaine Deste); to Mr Richard Sean Lewis of J. Rothschild Capital Management; and to the trustee of the DS Family Trust, Mr Lukas Kevin Stanford.”

I am afraid that there has been a misunderstanding. The email that I sent to court staff on 12 September 2025 followed receipt by me of the respondent’s written submission. It read as follows:

“Please can you tell me if Mr Stanford has confirmed sending his application to Klotho's solrs? If he has not confirmed, please send it anyway, inviting their comments.”

It will be seen that this email (which is my direction referred to at [16] above) was concerned only to invite the contempt applicant solicitors to comment, and no one else. In fact, the email actually sent out by court staff read as follows:

“Further to the below, His Honour Judge Matthews has asked if the other parties have any comments regarding Mr Stanford’s application?”

However, the list of persons to whom this email was sent included the respondent himself and all the persons listed by the respondent and set out in the extract from his Note at [18] above. It appears that this is because the original email sent by the respondent to the court in making the application of 9 September 2025 had been gratuitously copied by the respondent to all these other people, and court staff in sending successive emails in correspondence with the respondent or with the contempt applicant’s solicitors had simply pressed “Reply all”.

When my own email message was passed on, court staff did the same thing again, with the result that, not only did the contempt applicant’s solicitors receive the email (as I intended), but all the other people in the list received a copy as well (which I did not intend). My message was not for them, and, if the respondent had not copied them all into his original email to the court, they would not have received it. It is therefore unnecessary for me to address the arguments mistakenly made on the basis of the supposition that I had invited all these third parties to comment on the respondent’s application.