The High Court granted injunctions against the operator and a volunteer associated with a website carrying defamatory material about solicitor Damien M. P. Tansey. It also made final orders against the site’s hosting company after it failed to enter an appearance. The court did not decide damages against the company and left a request for disclosure of contributors’ identities for further consideration.
In a judgment delivered on 31 January 2012, Mr Justice Michael Peart found the material complained of seriously defamatory. He was satisfied that the defence John Gill might advance had no reasonable prospect of succeeding, based on the affidavits and submissions before him.
The plaintiff said the posts accused him of criminal conduct, dishonesty and professional misconduct. Gill, who represented himself, repeated grievances about Tansey and other solicitors and asserted that wrongdoing had occurred. The judge considered the documents Gill supplied but concluded they did not substantiate the allegations. That was an assessment for this interlocutory application, not a determination of the full action at trial.
The court granted interlocutory injunctions against Gill and Ann Vogelaar, who had described herself as an unpaid website volunteer. The orders covered removal of defamatory material concerning Tansey, restraint on further publication, and termination of the website’s operation. The judge said the evidence met the higher threshold applicable to the mandatory order to terminate the site, and that damages would not be an adequate remedy.
Dotster Inc., identified in the judgment as the site’s host and the company that registered its name, did not appear despite service. The court entered final orders against it in the same terms and adjourned assessment of damages should Tansey pursue that issue. No injunction relief was sought against Ans Vogelaar on this application; the plaintiff accepted that she had no real involvement with the site.
The judge did not then decide whether to order disclosure of the names and addresses of people involved in publishing the material. He said he would hear the plaintiff’s counsel on whether an order under Norwich Pharmacal principles was still needed, and put the matter back to another date for outstanding issues.