“i) Harassment is an ordinary English word with a well understood meaning: it is a persistent and deliberate course of unacceptable and oppressive conduct, targeted at another person, which is calculated to and does cause that person alarm, fear or distress; "a persistent and deliberate course of targeted oppression": Hayes -v- Willoughby [1], [12] per Lord Sumption. ii) The behaviour said to amount to harassment must reach a level of seriousness passing beyond irritations, annoyances, even a measure of upset, that arise occasionally in everybody's day-to-day dealings with other people. The conduct must cross the boundary between that which is unattractive, even unreasonable, and conduct which is oppressive and unacceptable.[...]”
“i) The court must consider whether the claimant has a "realistic" as opposed to a "fanciful" prospect of success: Swain v Hillman[2001] 1 All ER 91 ; ii) A "realistic" claim is one that carries some degree of conviction. This means a claim that is more than merely arguable: ED & F Man Liquid Products v Patel[2003] EWCA Civ 472 at [8] iii) In reaching its conclusion the court must not conduct a "mini-trial": Swain v Hillman iv) This does not mean that the court must take at face value and without analysis everything that a claimant says in his statements before the court. In some cases it may be clear that there is no real substance in factual assertions made, particularly if contradicted by contemporaneous documents: ED & F Man Liquid Products v Patel at [10] v) However, in reaching its conclusion the court must take into account not only the evidence actually placed before it on the application for summary judgment, but also the evidence that can reasonably be expected to be available at trial: Royal Brompton Hospital NHS Trust v Hammond (No 5)[2001] EWCA Civ 550 ; vi) Although a case may turn out at trial not to be really complicated, it does not follow that it should be decided without the fuller investigation into the facts at trial than is possible or permissible on summary judgment. Thus the court should hesitate about making a final decision without a trial, even where there is no obvious conflict of fact at the time of the application, where reasonable grounds exist for believing that a fuller investigation into the facts of the case would add to or alter the evidence available to a trial judge and so affect the outcome of the case: Doncaster Pharmaceuticals Group Ltd v Bolton Pharmaceutical Co 100 Ltd[2007] FSR 63 ; vii) On the other hand it is not uncommon for an application under Part 24 to give rise to a short point of law or construction and, if the court is satisfied that it has before it all the evidence necessary for the proper determination of the question and that the parties have had an adequate opportunity to address it in argument, it should grasp the nettle and decide it. The reason is quite simple: if the respondent's case is bad in law, he will in truth have no real prospect of succeeding on his claim or successfully defending the claim against him, as the case may be. Similarly, if the applicant's case is bad in law, the sooner that is determined, the better. If it is possible to show by evidence that although material in the form of documents or oral evidence that would put the documents in another light is not currently before the court, such material is likely to exist and can be expected to be available at trial, it would be wrong to give summary judgment because there would be a real, as opposed to a fanciful, prospect of success. However, it is not enough simply to argue that the case should be allowed to go to trial because something may turn up which would have a bearing on the question of construction: ICI Chemicals & Polymers Ltd v TTE Training Ltd[2007] EWCA Civ 725 .”
“Harassment can take different forms. Where the harassment which is alleged involves statements which a defendant will seek to justify at trial, there may be cases where an interim injunction will be appropriate. These are cases where such statements are part of the harassment which is relied on, but where that harassment has additional elements of oppression, persistence or unpleasantness, which are distinct from the content of the statements. An example might be a defendant who pursues an admitted adulterer through the streets for a lengthy period, shouting "You are an adulterer" through a megaphone. The fact that the statement is true, and could and would be justified at trial, would not necessarily prevent the conduct from being harassment, or prevent a court from restraining it at an interlocutory stage. The same point would apply to Howlett, if the banners flown from aircraft for several years over the claimant's house, instead of conveying abuse, had set out truthful allegations. [...]”
“… truth is not a defence to a claim in harassment… The communication of well-founded allegations to a body with a proper interest in receiving and investigating them is unlikely to be harassment, but the relentless scatter-gun repetition of allegations to all and sundry is likely to be harassment even if there were some truth in what is being said.”
“That the injunction orders dated5 March 2025 and2 May 2025 be stayed and discharged pursuant toCPR 3.1 (7) andCPR 23.11 , on the grounds that they were obtained through fraud, misrepresentation, and material non-disclosure by the claimants’ solicitors, Mills & Reeve LLP, acting in concert with their clients and associated parties.”