EWQ v GFD

On 29 June 2012, at a hearing without notice to the Defendant, I granted an order under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 prohibiting the Defendant from harassing the Claimant and a non-disclosure order. The course of conduct alleged to amount to harassment was the threat to disclose personal information and the demand for payments which the Claimant claims are unwarranted.

The Claimant and the Defendant are respectively a man and a woman, and they are both business people, and both travel extensively outside the jurisdiction of this court. The relationship between them is said to be both a business one and a personal one. The Claimant has a wife and two children who are still young. The relationship between the parties to the action has deteriorated in recent months, leading to the demands and threats which the Claimant alleges to amount to harassment. On at least one occasion the Defendant has contacted the Claimant’s wife.

On the evidence before me I was satisfied that there was a real risk that if notice had been given to the Defendant she might take steps to frustrate the purpose of the injunction sought.

I was also satisfied, pursuant to the Human Rights Act 1998 s.12 that the Claimant was likely to establish that the threatened publication should not be allowed. The information in question is of a kind which the court is likely to find to be private and confidential. There was nothing in the evidence before me to indicate that there might be any public interest in the disclosure of the information, or that it might be in the public domain.

The Return Date was 6 July. By that time the Defendant was represented but asked for further time to consider what course she should adopt in the proceedings. She gave undertakings substantially in the terms of the order that I had made on 29 June. I was satisfied that it was necessary in the interests of justice that the parties should be anonymised at this stage of the proceedings. Anonymity is necessary for the Claimant, since publicity would defeat the object of the hearing, and it is necessary for the Defendant because it would be unjust to name her at a time when she had not had an opportunity to respond to the serious allegations made against her, and her name has not been publicised elsewhere.

In so far as it is a non-disclosure order, the order that I made on 6 July is substantially in the form of the Model order set out in the Practice Guidance issued by the Master of the Rolls in August 2011. But the undertaking is not “until trial or further order”. It requires the parties to make an application to list a case management conference on a date not later than 31 October 2012. The undertakings given to the court by the Defendant are expressed to continue until the conclusion of that CMC. The order also provides that the Defendant is to have an opportunity to apply to discharge or vary the order on 23 July 2012, if so advised.