Succession (Yorkshire Edition) with bonus 'interesting' barrister

[Hercule Parrot]

Mods, this is only peripherally relevant to sovcit behaviour, but nonetheless a fascinating, tragic story with potential to become seriously vexatious. Happy for this post to be moved if you feel it's in the wrong neighbourhood. As I would prefer not to be dragged into this chaos, I will also mention that the following is my honest opinion after reading various court judgements, consistent with s3 Defamation Act 2013.

So, my interest was piqued by this recent article in a legal journal -
"Negligence claim against DWF and barristers ‘entirely without foundation’"
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/negli ... 63.article

Our story starts in the bleak midwinter of 1968, when James King started a business installing TV aerials. He later expanded into installing alarm systems, gained some major commercial contracts and built this into a substantial, prosperous business (£50m turnover, 600 staff). His son Anthony joined the business as apprentice MD, and in due course Mr King Sr was able to hand over the reins and enjoy a prosperous retirement.

For whatever reasons, Kings Security didn't prosper so well under Anthony's leadership. Maybe the market was changing, or they weren't keeping up with customer requirements. As a bystander, I can't help but think that the family were milking their cash-cow too hard. Mr King Sr still had a Porsche provided by the company, his wife also had a premium car, and the company was providing two vans for use by their church. Young Anthony perhaps wasn't helping with his insistence upon driving a company-funded Aston Martin.

Anyway, the net result was that the company was slowly sinking, and by late 2013 was within weeks of entering administration with very substantial liabilities. The King family's wealth derived from their 100% ownership of the company, so they stood to lose everything. At this dark hour, a saviour appeared - a wealthy, well-connected investor, offering a rescue deal under strikingly generous terms - hurrah!

In very general terms, the new investor would buy a majority shareholding for £750k, but the family could keep a significant stake. The new investor would pump additional money into the company, and young Anthony could stay on as Managing Director (salary £250kpa). As the company regained profitability, the King family would receive a further £1.25m in additional bonus payments.

This is where it gets wacky. Within months of gratefully taking the deal, the King family developed a belief that they had been tricked or exploited. And so they sulked, schemed and consulted lawyers, leading to a tsunami of ill-advised, unsuccessful litigation from 2015 to present day. During which they've certainly lost everything they had to legal costs...

First they tried to sue the investor for 'fraudulent misrepresentation'. This collapsed during the formal trial in 2017, when it became clear they had no actual evidence to substantiate their claims. They offered a full retraction & apology, and accepted responsibility for several £million in legal costs.

This contrition didn't last long, because in 2019 they tried and failed in another angle of attack via s994 Companies Act 2006, claiming they were being wronged as minority shareholders (https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk ... /2020/2861).
Around the same time, Anthony was discovered to be taking bribes from suppliers, and the majority owners kicked him out (https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk ... h/2021/325).

In 2021 they brought a grandiose 'unlawful means conspiracy' claim against both the investor and the investor's lawyers, alleging some vast, impenetrable scheme was hatched to cheat them of success in the 2017 trial (https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk ... /2021/1045). As the Judge remarks:

"3. From these basic facts has sprung a multiplicity of litigation which must inevitably put any observer with a taste for nineteenth century fiction in mind of the infamous Jarndyce case. The current claim is but one outcropping of that litigation."

This is where the 'interesting' barrister caught my eye - Mr Christopher Newman, who has presented most of the King family's claims so far. The Judge repeatedly criticises Newman's conduct of this hearing, and dismissed the claim as "totally without merit". It is rather disappointing that a wasted costs application by the defendants was refused (https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2023/453.html).

Undeterred, the King family were back for a third try in 2023 (the hearing discussed in the Law Gazette article). This time they sued their own lawyers and barristers from 2017, alleging that they had participated in a conspiracy to deliberately lose that claim (https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk ... /2023/3132). Again their claim rested on bald accusations of secret plots, without a scrap of evidence to substantiate them. Again their wild allegations were enthusiastically represented by Mr Christopher Newman, until something very weird happened near the end of the 24 day trial. It appears that Mr Newman left in a sulk, and the King's had to present their own closing submissions.

This is partially explained in the Judgement's final section of "Procedural Matters" but I readily admit I don't fully understand it at all. As a lay reader, my impression is that Mr Newman believed he was entitled to make serious allegations of dishonesty and improper conduct against other parties in the case, but if they said these allegations were false then that constituted an act of criminal harassment towards him. Newman repeated this assertion several times, in writing to the Judge. Really quite bizarre.

567. Following that hearing, Mr Newman sent me a letter dated 9 May 2023, copied to Mr Croxford and Mr Pooles, which was expressed to be sent on his own behalf as a citizen and not on behalf of the Kings. The central complaint was this:

“You will recall that I mentioned at the end of the hearing on Friday 28 April 2023 that attempts to associate me with the King case were illegal (Principle 18, Legal Service Board v Forster at [85]) and needed to stop. That came after Mr Glassey filed a Witness Statement naming me in express terms. Because Mr Glassey filed a Witness Statement naming me and then the next day must have instructed his Leading Counsel to attack me personally in court, notably after court business had finished and the Order had been made, that is a course of conduct (at least 2 occasions) engaging the Protection From Harassment Act 1997. In the 1998 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, the Rapporteur explained the rationale for this principle, stating at §181 that: Identifying lawyers with their clients’ causes, unless there is evidence to that effect, could be construed as intimidating and harassing the lawyers concerned. - It is also a contempt. Intimidating and harassing lawyers (by deliberately seeking to associate them with the cause of their clients) is the hallmark of some of the most despotic regimes in history, and an attack on lawyer is always and only an attack on the rule of law. …” (footnotes omitted)

568. The offending passage from Mr Glassey’s witness statement appears to have been this:

“I have become accustomed to the numerous and baseless allegations of dishonesty and impropriety which have been variously made against me and my Associates during my conduct of these proceedings by the Kings, their solicitors, and their counsel Mr Newman, but I should address the allegations at paragraphs 6.2, 6.3 and 57 of Mr Newman's skeleton argument that we and Clydes have chosen deliberately to breach a Court Order so as to bring about a situation whereby we wrest control of the preparation of the trial bundles from the Claimants. This is unfounded and untrue.”

Mr Newman had indeed filed a 22-page skeleton argument for the hearing, making a number of allegations to the effect complained of by Mr Glassey. Mr Newman’s complaint that he ought not, in this respect, to have been associated with his clients overlooks, in my view, the conduct reasonably to be expected of him personally with regard to allegations of deliberate impropriety. (my emphasis)

....

571. As I mentioned near the beginning of this judgment, on the morning after he had made oral closing submissions on behalf of the Kings, Mr Newman circulated a letter dated 19 July 2023 stating that he was unable to represent the Kings for the final two days of the trial. The letter indicated that it had been triggered by § 14 of the [defendant] Barristers’ written closing submissions, which said this:

14. This case demonstrates why those obligations [the professional obligations on counsel] are so important. As Lord Hobhouse explained in Medcalf at [53] – [54], the advocate is in a privileged position, with a right of audience and immunity from suit for defamation. That carries with it certain duties, including the duty to exercise appropriate restraint when making allegations of serious misconduct. Ds 2 and 3 (as well as Ms Connor, Mr Blakey, and Mr Wilson) are professional persons who have spent the last four years under the shadow of allegations of the utmost seriousness made in public – allegations which if made out would destroy their reputations and end their careers. However misconceived they may be, the stress of living with those allegations, and the risk that third parties may if only in passing think that there is something in them, are both heightened by the fact that they carry the imprimatur of Counsel. That is, in part, precisely the state of affairs that Counsel’s duties exist to prevent by the exercise of his informed professional opinion conscientiously formed and having identified whether or not there is admissible evidence that can objectively be said to support the making of such serious allegations. Disregard of those obligations has in this case been deeply unfair on Ds2 and 3.”

572. Mr Newman’s letter of 19 July complained that that paragraph was unlawful harassment, contrary to principle and an offence under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. He suggested that it formed part of a pattern that had continued throughout the trial, citing three occasions when Mr Croxford had referred to Anthony King and Mr Newman in the same breath.

As a lay reader, I don't think this remotely qualifies as a pattern of criminal harassment. The Defendant lawyers are absolutely correct, a professional barrister has a duty to the court and to the Bar Standards, clearly set out in para 419 of the judgement. He should not be presenting allegations and accusations which lack any evidence, and have repeatedly been rejected in previous hearings. Seems to me that Mr Newman has a whiff of querulous paranoia about him (honest opinion etc) and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he'd fallen down the rabbithole.

Sorry for long read, hope it's interesting for someone.