Emails: People at all three claimants on receiving end
A law firm, its professional indemnity insurer – and another law firm acting for both – have been granted a permanent injunction to stop the father of an ex-client harassing them.
Susie Alegre, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, described Andrew Baldwin’s actions as “tantamount to blackmail”.
She said: “The way in which Mr Baldwin has bombarded the claimants with threats and entirely unfounded allegations by email, his follow up on his threats attending the claimants’ offices when he has been clearly told not to and his increasingly oppressive demands for money backed by threats to spread his baseless allegations more broadly to the media and regulators are very clearly not reasonable.”
His daughter had been a client of London and Surrey firm Owen White & Catlin (OWC) and in January 2021 he complained about the service provided and the fees charged. Unhappy with OWC’s response, he complained to the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) in November 2022.
Central to Mr Baldwin’s complaint, the judge explained, was his belief that his daughter never signed the client-care letter and that the documentation, including email exchanges about her engagement of OWC, was “forged and fraudulent”.
The LeO complaint was resolved by an agreed outcome whereby OWC paid £859.64 to Mr Baldwin and his daughter.
“This was intended to conclude any dispute over fees which, as [counsel for OWC] conceded before me, had been high.”
But Mr Baldwin was not satisfied with this and, in March 2023, visited OWC’s office in Feltham unannounced.
“He refused to leave and OWC says he was acting in a threatening manner which caused distress to its employees so that it had to call the police. The defendant finally left when requested by the police.”
Mr Baldwin complained to the Solicitors Regulation Authority but it decided to take no action.
OWC’s insurer, Travelers, instructed Mills & Reeve to look into his various allegations and complaints. In May 2024, Mills & Reeve rejected the allegations of fraud and denied the complaints and losses claimed in their entirety.
It also rejected “the escalating quantum” of Mr Baldwin’s threatened claim, which went from £107,656 in February 2024 to £1.8m in January 2025.
In May 2024, Mr Baldwin visited two of OWC’s offices and in July 2024 he handed out leaflets to passers-by outside the office in Shepperton. He has also been at Traveler’s offices.
Judge Alegre recounted how this year Mr Baldwin sent multiple emails to people working at the three claimants, alleging fraud, threatening public exposure and urging them to settle the matter “before this becomes something far bigger than you can control”.
An interim injunction under the Protection from Harassment Act 1977 was granted in March and in yesterday’s ruling the judge acceded to the claimants’ application to strike out Mr Baldwin’s defence and make it permanent.
Despite giving him greater latitude as a litigant in person, Judge Alegre said none of the various documents put forward as a defence actually responded to the allegations made in the harassment claim.
“He does not deny the allegations of harassment in his submissions, he simply ignores them and continues to expand the pattern of harassment with further completely unfounded allegations of fraud against the claimants’ representatives during these proceedings…
“In these circumstances it is impossible for the claimants to understand any basis for the defence in this claim and I therefore strike out the defence.”
The judge went on to grant summary judgment as there was clearly no defence in law. “The particulars of claim set out a course of conduct that undoubtedly amounts to harassment.
“The constant barrage of increasingly angry, threatening and abusive emails with an ever-expanding range of addressees and ever-increasing financial demands must have been extremely distressing for the recipients. His aggressive attendance at claimants’ premises made it clear that he was prepared to deliver on his threats.”
The judge said it was “clear that nothing short of an injunction was going to stop him from continuing his harassing behaviour”.
If Mr Baldwin was concerned about fraud, “he should have reported that to the police and left it at that”.
Judge Alegre went on: “He may have started out in 2021 wishing to seek justice for his daughter when he complained to OWC and then to the Legal Ombudsman and the SRA.
“But the emails and conduct complained about in February and March of 2025 are clearly designed to extract ever increasing amounts of money from the claimants to make the harassment stop. They are tantamount to blackmail.”
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