Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Ltd & Ors v Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty & Ors

The First Claimant in this case is a company based in the UK. It has a number of premises in England and a large number of employees. Its business involves conducting research for the purposes of the pharmaceutical, biotechnological, agro-chemical, veterinary, food and chemical industries. It also brings this action on behalf of the Novartis group worldwide, pursuant to s. 3A Protection from Harassment Act 1997. The Second Claimants are Andrew Grantham, chief security officer for the First Claimant, and Nicola Maxted, solicitor for the First Claimant, who act on behalf of all the officers and employees of the First Claimant and the worldwide group in a representative capacity under CPR 19.6.

The First Defendant is an unincorporated association; a group of people who share the common aim of preventing the use of live animals in experimentation and seeking, to that end, the closure of the First Claimant’s business. The umbrella group is known as “SHAC”; Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty and it is represented under CPR 19.6 by two named individuals, Dr Max Gastone and Debbie Vincent. The Second Defendants are people who currently intend, or who are likely to embark upon, a course of protest amounting to, at the least, unlawful harassment. They have a common purpose but not a common form and are incapable of being identified or described with any precision.

There has been a long history of protest at sites occupied by the First Claimant for the purposes of their business activities and on occasion at the home addresses of its officers or employees. Much of that protest has been lawful and whatever the inconvenience created it has not caused physical injury to any individual, intimidation to a criminal level or damage to property. On other occasions the protest has gone beyond the limit of what is lawful and in some cases to the point where successful prosecutions have been brought.

The Claimants have, on many occasions, sought and obtained injunctions preventing anticipated acts of violence against individuals or their property. The current position is:

The Claimants now seek full injunctive relief against the Second Defendants. They do not seek to consolidate the first and second claims.

It is submitted that First Defendants are certainly aware of these proceedings. Notice has been sent to those who can be identified to operate under the SHAC umbrella and those who have previously assisted them in court proceedings. Debbie Vincent is currently in custody, she is serving a sentence of six years imprisonment for an offence of conspiracy to blackmail, she was convicted, with others, on 19 March 2014 before the Crown Court at Winchester. She, again with others, is also awaiting sentence at the Crown Court at Southwark for her admitted part in offences under s. 145 Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Those being offences of unlawful interference with contractual relationships so as to harm an animal research organisation.

The Claimants rely upon evidence set out in witness statements from Andrew Grantham and Nicola Maxted. Those statements show, they allege, that there has been a change in the nature of the means proposed to achieve the general aims of the First and Second Defendants. The material exhibited clearly shows, both by historical account and stated intent, that some of those concerned are willing to break not only the terms of any injunction but the criminal law generally. The Claimants apprehend the continuation and expansion of acts of violence and/or intimidation against their staff and officers, as well as their premises.

In the fourth witness statement of Nicola Maxted, dated 9 September 2014, there is exhibited a download from the SHAC website as NM/3. It is headed, “SHAC ENDS We made history……The future is ours.” It was downloaded on or about 13 August 2014. The document contains the following statements of achievement and intent;

“Alongside the legal protests carried out by SHAC activists, there have been relentless and hard hitting ALF actions carried out against HLS’ suppliers, customers and financial backers. Courageous freedom fighters have risked breaking the law to commit direct action in the name of animals.”

“It’s through this innovative combination of SHAC’s high profile lawful protest activity and the ALF’s unconventional, but highly effective tactics, that the campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences has been so successful.”

“With the onslaught of government repression against animal rights activists in the UK, it’s time to re-assess our methods, obstacles and opponent’s weaknesses, to build up our solidarity network for activists and to start healing the effects of repression.

Although we’re announcing the closure of the SHAC campaign, it will always be an important part of our history and a reminder of the ingenuity and power of the animal rights movement. SHAC will continue to inspire activists around the world to join the struggle against animal testing and take on those who profit from abuse and exploitation.

It’s our knowledge and ability to develop and focus our tactics in the most effective ways, which will continue to make us a threat to the animal exploitation industries.

With the fires of liberation and justice burning in our hearts, we look to the future.

Now the question everyone should be asking is…….

What are we going to do next?”

It is said that this shows a metamorphosis on the part of some or all of those who can be identified within the SHAC organisation but also those who remain unknown. It talks in terms of a change of tactics and appears to indicate a resolve to use methods both lawful and unlawful to achieve its stated aims.

Nicola Maxted has made a fifth witness statement, dated 7 October 2014. She has researched the most up to date position of SHAC. The earlier expressed view that the dismantling of the SHAC organisation is merely to allow more fluid groups to operate, made up, possibly of people formerly within the SHAC group, is maintained. Her research identifies a number of different groups.

In his second witness statement, dated 7 July 2014, Andrew Grantham exhibits a document, described as a zine headed “MILITANT FORCES AGAINST HLS2. It discusses acts of violence and arson, the desecration of graves, the theft of human ashes and makes continuous reference to Auschwitz.

The membership, if there is such a thing as membership of these groups, is amorphous. There is no way of determining who is affiliated to which or how many of the various groups. The groups or associations clearly contain a mixture of law adding protestors and those willing, or even enthusiastic, to break the law in the pursuit of their aim. The Claimants cannot identify the members of these groups or the individuals who may move between the groups or whether there are, in fact, more persons who may engage in activity amounting to harassment or worse.

It is clear that these sorts of publications and published statements of intent carry explicit and implicit threats of violence to people and property.

It is impossible to say how many supporters these entities may have but it is clear they do have supporters, who on the face of this material either currently intend or are likely to take up the call to resort to unlawful means of registering their protest at the continued activity of the Claimants, their employees and officers.

It is now settled that this court has the power to injunct a party described as “Person or Persons Unknown”. That power is set out expressly in CPR 55.3(4) which directs that a claim for the possession of land occupied by persons who have entered on to that land as trespassers and cannot be identified by name should be brought against “persons unknown”.

In Bloomsbury Publishing group Plc v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2003] 1 WLR 1633 at 21 et seq, a group identified only as “person or persons unknown” formed the second defendant to the action. That group was made up of those individuals who had or might seek to use unlawfully obtained copies of the unpublished fifth book in the Harry Potter series before the appointed date for publication. The Vice-Chancellor reviewed the historical position. He concluded that the overriding objective and the obligations cast on the court were inconsistent with an undue reliance on form over substance. There was no requirement that a defendant had to be named, merely a direction that he should be. The proper application of CPR 3.10 is incompatible with a conclusion that the joinder of a defendant by description rather than by name is for that reason alone impermissible. However, the description used had to be sufficiently certain as to identify both those who were included and those who were not.

“If that test is satisfied then it does not seem to me to matter that the description may apply to no one or to more than one person nor that there is no further element of subsequent identification whether by service or otherwise.”

A similar process has been used in cases involving privacy issues, when some people within a group of paparazzi, who cannot be identified any more specifically, have been injuncted from pursuing a course of conduct which may amount to harassment Stone and Williams v “WXY” (person or persons unknown responsible for pursuing and/or taking photographs of the Claimants outside their home and in other places during March 2010) [2012] EWHC 3184 (QB).

There has also been a history of injunctive relief being granted in the terms sought here in the various actions brought involving Novartis and SHAC.

Applying the test as established in the Bloomsbury case, there does not appear to be any potential injustice to those identified as persons unknown in this case, who may seek to carry out the prohibited acts. In the balance there is a considerable risk of injustice to the Claimants if the order is not made. This is, of course, subject to a stringent test of the proper terms of the actual order itself. The order sought has, in fact, been amended slightly to ensure its terms are appropriate and precisely describe the conduct prohibited.

The Claimants seek finality. It is axiomatic that the terms of the over riding objective should grant both certainty and, where appropriate, finality. The power to grant a final order is set out in s.37(1) Senior Courts Act 1981, the test is whether, “ it appears to the Court to be just and convenient to do so.” It is in this case both just and convenient to grant the order in final terms. Before reaching that decision regard must be had to CPR 24, which governs when a claim of this type may be determined finally without a trial. CPR 24.2 sets out the grounds upon which summary judgment can be given,

The order sought contains a penal notice in the same terms as the interlocutory order granted by Phillips J on 14 April 2014. It must be correct that if the order can, properly, be granted against both identified Defendants, whether by name or representation, and “persons unknown” delineated with sufficient precision, then a penal notice can properly attach to such an order.

In practical terms the inclusion of such a notice, subject to all proper safeguards, is what gives effect to the final order. The parties have permission to apply to the court for any necessary consequential orders and directions.

Accordingly, the injunctive relief sought is granted by way of final order in the terms sought.