KB-2023-003483 - [2025] EWHC 1799 (KB)

C1 had been a legal academic in China for many years before her retirement in January 2022. By then she was a professor of law at Shenzhen University. C2 is a lawyer practising in a law firm in China. C1 and C2 are the parents of C3. C3 has been in a romantic relationship with C4 since July 2022.

C4 was previously in a relationship with D1. Rather than respecting C4’s decision to reject his marriage proposal and end their relationship, D1 subjected her, C3 and his parents to the torts alleged. D1 attended uninvited at the homes of C1, C2 and C3 in England and C4 in the Ukraine and harassed them. D1 also extensively defamed them on the internet, thereby harassing them further.

The Claimants relied on many hundreds of posts on three websites, mostly dating from November 2022 to March 2023. The websites were: https://www.6park.com, http://wenxuecity.com and https://fishandchips.fans.The posts defamed the Claimants by, for example, alleging that C1 and C2 have committed criminal offences and by casting various aspersions on the characters of C3 and C4. The posts involved the disclosure of personal data about C1, C2 and C3 in the form of Land Registry documentation about the three properties they own in Manchester; and photos of cars believed to belong to C3.

D1’s actions damaged the Claimants’ reputations and had a serious adverse impact on C2’s health such that in October 2022 he had a heart attack.

The Claimants claimed that D2, D3 and D4 respectively were the companies responsible for the three websites.

Further details of the factual background can be found in [2025] EWHC 912 (KB) at [24]-[52].

The nature of D3’s business and its engagement with the Claimants was described in two witness statements provided by Wayne Lin, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Director of D3 dated 27 November 2024 (“Lin 1”) and 17 January 2025 (“Lin 2”). Lin 1 adopted and agreed with the contents of a witness statement prepared by Atif Nazir, a Legal Executive at D3’s then solicitors, Farleys Solicitors LLP (“Farleys LLP”), dated 27 November 2024.

D3 is registered in the state of California in the United States of America. D3 provides an online forum/platform via http://wenxuecity.com (“the website”), which has approximately 1,000,000 users. The website was established in 1997. It primarily serves Chinese readers living overseas. D3 are not the originators of any posts or comments on the forum, and they do not have any editorial responsibility for content on it. They merely provide the website through which people can post: Lin 1 at [3]-[4] and [7].