Hill: Decision overturned
The High Court was wrong to rule that it did not have jurisdiction to grant claimants a protective injunction stopping a defendant from harassing their lawyers, the Court of Appeal has decided.
The judge had the power to grant an injunction under the inherent common law jurisdiction “to protect the integrity of its proceedings in the interests of justice”, it held [1].
The court was led by Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls, sitting with Lord Justice Warby and Lady Justice Whipple, and they also heard from an advocate to the court appointed by the Attorney General.
City firm Quinn Emanuel acted for Titan Wealth Holdings, a related company and two senior employees in a claim for breach of confidence, breach of contract and harassment against former employee Marian Atinuke Okunola.
Earlier in 2024, the High Court granted the claimants an interim injunction to restrain Ms Okunola from harassing the employees and stop her disseminating confidential information, as well as delivering up the information.
She was held in contempt of this in June 2024 and in February 2025 the penalty of six months’ custody was activated. Ms Okunola was released from prison around May 2025.
Separately, the claimants sought the protective injunction to prohibit her from publishing any abusive message to or about the lawyers, and from using “profane or otherwise grossly offensive language or imagery” in communications sent or copied to them.
In October 2024, Mrs Justice Hill said [2] acknowledged the distress and inconvenience caused to the lawyers – saying one would have a credible claim for harassment – but held that the application foundered on the absence of a cause of action between the claimants and defendant.
If Quinn Emanuel wanted an injunction, it would have to apply for one itself, she said.
Separately, in the substantive trial, heard at the same time, Hill J found for the claimants.
The Court of Appeal decided she was wrong in law to conclude that she lacked any jurisdictional basis to grant the injunction.
“The judge had the power to grant an injunction of the kind sought under the inherent common law jurisdiction of the court to protect the integrity of its proceedings in the interests of justice.”
This power was no limited to cases where the conduct restrained would, absent the injunction, be a criminal contempt of court, as the advocate had suggested.
“The court can, in theory, act in the interests of justice to restrain any conduct that is serious enough to threaten the integrity of its own process.
“In many cases, however, conduct of the kind that would be serious enough to threaten the integrity of its process and its proceedings would also be regarded as conduct of sufficient seriousness to found an allegation of contempt.”
That was not the case here, the court said, but if contempt had been alleged and proved, “neither article 10 [freedom of expression] nor the immunity from proceedings that attaches to statements made in the course of litigation would have prevented the court exercising the power to grant an injunction to protect the integrity of its process”.
In cases where contempt was not established, “the court will have to consider carefully (i) whether an injunction to restrain similar future conduct will impinge on article 10 rights (and if so, whether that interference can be justified under article 10(2)), and (ii) whether the order proposed respects the immunity from proceedings that attaches to statements made in the course of litigation”.
The fact that the affected lawyers at Quinn Emanuel could have brought their own claims against the defendant under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 would also be relevant to the court’s consideration of the grant of the injunction.
Any injunction granted “must be tailored so as to restrain such threatened misconduct as creates a material risk of interference with the integrity of the proceedings, but not in wider terms than are necessary to do justice nor to interfere with the defendant’s right freely to conduct the litigation as they see fit”, it went on.
The judges added that the injunction sought before Hill J should not have been granted anyway, in part because it was too broad and a “far more straightforward remedy was probably available to Quinn Emanuel” under the 1997 Act.
Further, since contempt was not alleged, “the court was placed in a difficult position” as it needed to consider the article 10 and immunity questions in detail and had not been asked to do so.
Titan reframed its application before the Court of Appeal using the language of the Malicious Communications Act 1988, which makes it an offence to send a message which is indecent or grossly offensive.
But the judges decided not to grant it for the same reasons, and also because the conduct complained of had stopped after the substantive trial.