Email: Comments breached undertakings
A man who threatened to “beat the shit” out of solicitors who acted as administrators of his aunt’s will has been found in contempt of court by the High Court.
Mr Justice Griffiths said [1] Dr Sean Stimson wrote and sent a letter to Foot Anstey in September 2025 making a number of threats.
Addressed “Dear Foot Anstey Wankers”, it read: “I am giving you one week to return my aunts [sic] house and bury her properly. If not I will come and beat the shit out of you including the bitches.
“I have had enough of your crap and the jails are full so I will just keep coming for you until you comply or are permanently hospitalised.”
Griffiths J recounted that Helen Elizabeth Smith died in December 2021, leaving her estate to four charities, which were all originally clients of Foot Anstey. Neither Dr Stimson nor any member of his family benefitted from the will at all.
Dr Stimson disputed the will, claiming that Ms Smith lacked capacity when she made it and there was a subsequent will in 2020.
Griffiths J observed that this will “is typewritten in a font style and size which resembles those favoured by Dr Stimson (as I can see from the other documents before me) and it does not bear the name or address of any solicitor or legal adviser”.
It is signed in handwriting “that looks radically different to the signature” on the 2016 will.
The original executors renounced their appointment “following communications from Dr Stimson” and in 2023 Foot Anstey applied for letters of administration of the 2016 will.
Foot Anstey was granted an interim injunction against Dr Stimson in October 2024 after four female members of staff received anonymous, “obscene and criminal” phone calls [2].
Dr Stimson subsequently agreed the terms of a final injunction, which included undertakings not to engage in any communication with Foot Anstey that was “abusive or threatening or otherwise involves harassment”.
In February 2025, an order to issue the grant of probate was made. “In other words, the will of 2016 was accepted as proved,” Griffiths J said.
“It seems that any effort Dr Stimson may have made to have the 2020 document proved instead either failed or was for some other reason ineffective.”
The contempt application was made over an email in June 2025 and the September 2025 letter.
Dr Stimson accepted that he sent the email, which included the sentence: “My Aunts last wishes were very clear, and they will not be ignored and if necessary defended with force.”
Denying that the email was a breach of the undertakings, Dr Stimson argued that the phrase “with force” may “be intended to mean that Dr Stimson will robustly or vigorously or with lawful force defend what he understands to be his rights and those of his family, and should not be read as a threat of physical or unlawful force”.
However, Griffiths J said it could “only be read as a threat of force, that is physical force, and not as a threat to pursue legal proceedings forcefully”. This was a “clear and unambiguous breach” of the undertakings.
Dr Stimson denied that he had “anything to do” with the September 2025 letter but Griffiths J said the evidence was “overwhelming” that he wrote it – even if it was ruder than he usually was.
“It includes but is not limited to the direct evidence of the signature, and the content of the letter, which is in the first person and from Dr Stimson about his aunt.
“Even if all the evidence is properly to be treated as circumstantial, however (including that evidence), a reasonable mind can only conclude, as I conclude, that there is no realistic possibility that anyone other than Dr Stimson wrote the letter and caused it to be sent.
“I find as a fact to the criminal standard of proof that he did both.”
Dr Stimson was “not a credible witness”, he added, while “no-one else has credibly been suggested as the sender”.
The judge found Dr Stimson in contempt of court and said he would decide the penalty at a hearing next week.