KB-2025-003193 - [2025] EWHC 2642 (KB)

After the hearing on 7 October, and after this judgment had been substantially completed in draft, the claimant’s solicitors filed, late in the afternoon of 14 October, draft Particulars of Claim. These dramatically reduce the scope of the proposed defamation action and, indeed, of other aspects of the action.

Pleadings and evidence serve quite different purposes. A pleading formulates the case that has to be met. Evidence supports the case. Usually (and certainly in this case), evidence is a mixture of what is relevant and irrelevant or of marginal relevance. Evidence should not be confused with pleading. It is essential that the party claiming interim injunctive relief in a freedom of speech case identifies its own case in a pleading unless the most extreme pressures of time make that practically impossible. If it relies on raw material by way of exhibited evidence, without providing a pleaded case, it is asking the court, and the parties, to work out what the pleaded case will be for themselves. That does not make for clear thinking or reliable analysis. Both of those are essential when assessing the merits and prospects of a given case.

The draft Particulars of Claim should in this case have been provided well before the hearing on 7 October. That was already nearly six weeks after the initial application to Farbey J. There was ample time to do it.

The failure to produce draft Particulars of Claim, at the hearing on 7 October or immediately afterwards, meant that time was wasted trying to construct the claimant’s case from her evidence, when preparing for that hearing, and at the hearing itself, and when writing the first draft of this judgment. It also deprived the defendants of the opportunity of considering the pleading when making their own submissions at the hearing.

The pleading provided on 14 October is 14 pages long, with an additional 135 pages of appendices, including transcripts not previously in evidence.

It abandons the claimant’s claims that the defendants defamed her by alleging that she engaged in theft, or fraud, or online scams, or engaged in blackmail or extortion (which are all claims reflected in paragraph 7(a)(v) and (vi) of the draft order).

It limits the defamation claim to statements that, in their ordinary and natural meaning, are said to mean: