Leigh Day’s client had issued a public media release minutes before a ruling’s scheduled hand-down
The UK High Court has praised claimant firm Leigh Day for its reinforcement of court embargoes following a client incident, reported the Law Society Gazette.
Animal welfare group the Badger Trust, for whom Leigh Day had acted in the matter of Wild Justice and Badger Trust v Natural England, had issued a media release to 85 members of the press four minutes before the scheduled hand-down of a JR decision regarding badger cull licences. The embargo violation occurred due to a miscommunication between the Badger Trust’s chair and its chief executive, per the court’s judgment.
Leigh Day senior environmental solicitor Carol Day had reinforced the importance of the court embargo and cautioned the Badger Trust against releasing press statements to journalists before the ruling was officially handed down – even under embargo.
“Please note that this draft is confidential to the parties and their legal representatives. Neither the draft itself nor its substance may be disclosed to any other person or used in the public domain. The parties must take all reasonable steps to ensure that its confidentiality is preserved. No action is to be taken (other than internally) in response to the draft before judgment has been formally pronounced in open court. A breach of any of these obligations may be treated as contempt of court,” Day had written in an email to the trust, a snippet of which was included in the judgment.
Justice Michael Fordham described the firm as having acted with “complete propriety” in the incident, per a statement published by the Gazette. The judge highlighted Leigh Day’s recommendation that the meaning of a legal embargo and its difference from a press embargo be explicitly explained. He noted that the firm provided this explanation on more than one occasion.
“It is important to maximise the efforts to curtail what has been a recurring problem about what the court embargo is and is not,” Fordham wrote in a snippet of the judgment published by the Gazette.
He emphasized that disclosing information regarding the result or content of a judgment before receiving the final handed-down ruling constituted a “breach of a duty imposed by the court and owed to the court.”
“It is significant. It can also be a contempt of court. The court will always investigate it fully, and treat it very seriously,” Fordham wrote in the ruling.
The judge inked the message “the court embargo is fundamentally different from a journalism embargo” in all caps and bold under the “getting the message across” subheading of the judgment. He indicated that Badger Trust had agreed to cover the £900 in costs incurred by the secretary of state for environment, food, and rural affairs (the interested party) in preparing written submissions.
Leigh Day instructed David Wolfe and Barney McCay to act for Badger Trust in the matter of Wild Justice and Badger Trust v Natural England. GLD instructed Charles Streeten to act for the secretary of state.
