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Huntingdon Life Sciences Ltd v Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
[2004] EWHC 1231 (QB), [2004] All ER (D) 396 (May)

PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE - SUMMARY JUDGMENT – STRIKING OUT – REASONABLE PROSPECT OF SUCCESS

The first claimant carried on business conducting research involving experiments on live animals under laboratory conditions. The second claimant was the first claimant’s managing director, who sought to claim relief on behalf of all its employees. The first defendant was an unincorporated association composed of people who were opposed to vivisection and who shared the common purpose of closing down the first claimant as a business. The second to tenth defendants were individuals said by the claimants to be connected to the first defendant and sharing its aims. The eleventh and twelfth defendants were two other unincorporated associations active in the field of animal rights generally. The claimants had commenced proceedings against the defendants seeking injunctive relief, restraining them from pursuing a course of conduct which amounted to harassment of the first claimant’s employees. An injunction was granted in April 2003, and continued in June 2002 (see [2003] All ER (D) 280 (Jun)). The second, third, fourth and ninth defendants, ‘the relevant defendants’, subsequently entered a joint defence to the claimants’ claims. The other defendants played no part in the proceedings. The defence provided, inter alia, that the relevant defendants denied that they had been involved in tortious acts or harassment and that the claimants’ reliance on the past convictions of the relevant defendants relating to the first defendant’s activities was not a valid basis for injunctive relief. The claimants applied to strike out the defence, or part thereof, of the relevant defendants on the ground that it did not disclose reasonable grounds for defending the claim and/or was an abuse of process and/or likely to obstruct the just disposal of the proceedings. The claimants further applied for summary judgment against the relevant defendants on the grounds that they had no real prospect of successfully defending the claim and that there was no compelling reason why the claim should be disposed of at a trial.

Held – The application would be dismissed. It could not be said that there was no real prospect of a successful defence for the relevant defendants and there was a compelling case for the matter to be tried. On the facts of the instant case, the relevant defendants might be able to show that over the past two to three years, they had not been personally involved in or incited others to take part in unlawful acts, as opposed to legitimate direct action. Moreover, whilst the claimants’ case was a strong one, an authoritative judgment denouncing those defendants who were guilty of the alleged serious and criminal behaviour would be both of public importance and of undoubted authenticity if it came after a full open trial at which the defendants had had every opportunity to defend themselves. There existed a possibility, which was more than fanciful, that at least some of the relevant defendants might refute the allegations connecting them with the unlawful actions complained of or, at the least, might persuade the court that its discretion should be exercised differently once the full facts were known. The matter would, therefore, be permitted to proceed to trial.