UK: Court “lacks jurisdiction” to protect party’s lawyers from abuse

The High Court does not have jurisdiction to grant claimants a protective injunction stopping a defendant from harassing their lawyers, a judge has ruled.

Mrs Justice Hill said that, if City firm Quinn Emanuel wanted an injunction, it would have to apply for one itself.

It is acting for Titan Wealth Holdings, a related company and two senior employees in a claim for breach of confidence, breach of contract and harassment against former employee Marian Atinuke Okunola.

Earlier this year, the High Court granted the claimants an interim injunction to restrain Ms Okunola from harassing the employees and stop her disseminating confidential information, as well as delivering up the information.

In June, Mr Justice Chamberlain held her in contempt for numerous breaches of the injunction and imposed a penalty of six months’ custody, suspended on condition of compliance with the injunction.

The claimants have applied to activate the sentence, in part because Ms Okunola had sought to continue harassing the employees by targeting Quinn Emanuel.

Separately, they sought this protective injunction to prohibit her from publishing any abusive message to or about the lawyers, and from using “profane or otherwise grossly offensive language or imagery” in communications sent or copied to them.

The draft order expressly excluded any court documents and contained a penal notice.

Hill J accepted that Ms Okunola had subjected the solicitors “to communication which is repetitive, at times pointless, and which includes gratuitously distressing and demeaning content”.

She continued: “The correspondence has included threatening and/or sexually abusive content aimed at the third and fourth claimants, their lawyers and others linked with them, such as [partner Yasseen] Gailani’s mother.

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UK: Court “lacks jurisdiction” to protect party’s lawyers from abuse