KB-2025-001904 - [2025] EWHC 1602 (KB)

I asked the parties to agree a timetable and indicated that I would reserve judgment so they did not need to allow time for me to give an ex tempore judgment. The parties could not agree, between them, who should address me first. I indicated that I would like to hear counsel for C first as my provisional view was that the most important issues for me to resolve were the C’s issues 4 and 5 – i.e. whether I should grant interim relief.

The hearing began at 10.30am and appeared to conclude at 4.30pm. I thanked the legal teams, reiterated that I would reserve judgment and said I would provide it as soon as I could. At that point, when I was standing up to leave the court, Mr Sethi KC made two unheralded applications. First, he asked me to make an order in the same terms as Injunction 1.2. Secondly, he asked me to extend time for C to file Particulars of Claim. Mr Gorton KC opposed each application.

After taking a short time to consider the applications, I indicated orally that I would not make either such order. As to the latter, I said that I would attempt to draft my judgment that week. I said it was a matter for C whether to file the Particulars of Claim by Friday (which I was told was the date it was due) or make an application in writing for an extension of time. As to the former, I said that, on my reading, Injunction 1.2 had lapsed. I also said that I accepted the submission of Mr Gorton KC that it would be a significant infringement of the right of open justice to impose the order requested. We had had a full day of argument in open court and there would have to be a very strong justification before I would make an order that would prevent Ds speaking to anyone about that hearing, other than for the purposes of legal advice. I did not and do not think that there was any such justification.

I would add the following observations to what I said in court. If Ds had had the ability and inclination to tip off the source about the existence of these proceedings they could, in any event, have done so between 4.30pm on 6 June and the time (4 days later) when Mr Sethi made his application. There was no evidence that they had done so. Indeed, the idea that Ds might tip off a source had no solid evidential foundation. The witness statements from Ds make clear that they did not know the identity of the source who provided them with the 1 May Materials. There is no evidence to contradict that. Mr Sethi KC’s submissions laid great emphasis on sentences in AP’s correspondence. He placed particular emphasis on Ms Watson’s email of 15.16 on 14 May 2025, which I have cited above and what she said about ‘the provider’. He stressed the word ‘he’ several times and emphasised the passages where Ms Watson set out the concerns of the ‘provider’. The implication, which was not spelled out in terms, appeared to be that the statements of Ds were untrue and one or both Ds did know the source – how else could Ms Watson have known the source’s gender and concerns?

In my judgment, there is an obvious and innocent explanation for the words Ms Watson used in her 14 May email. In paragraph 21 of Ms Watson’s statement she explains that, after her initial instructions, she thought that D1 had been provided with the 1 May Materials directly by a source in C. However, she later came to realise that it was D2, not D1, who first received the 1 May Materials and then began to gist them to D1. It seems to me that Ms Watson’s comments, on 14 May, about ‘the provider’ were most likely comments about D2. It was D2 (and D2 is of course a ‘he’) who expressed concerns about C’s conduct and whether they had complied with the DSAR. I don’t think it can be inferred, from the email of 14 May 2025, that D1, D2 and Ms Watson are all lying or concealing information about the source who sent the 1 May Materials to D2.

In short, the risk of this unknown source being tipped off by Ds is overstated by C and does not justify what would be a very serious infringement on the principle of open justice.