The principal purpose of the Act is to protect individuals from conduct, such as stalking, which amounts to harassment. The Act creates criminal offences as well as what amounts to a statutory tort.
Under section 1(1) of the Act, D must not pursue a course of conduct which amounts to harassment of C and which D knows or ought to know amounts to harassment of C.
S 1(3) provides that section 1(1) ‘does not apply to a course of conduct if the person who pursued it shows–
(a) that it was pursued for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime,
(b) that it was pursued under any enactment or rule of law or to comply with any condition or requirement imposed by any person under any enactment, or
(c) that in the particular circumstances the pursuit of the course of conduct was reasonable.’
Under section 2(1), D will be guilty of an offence if he pursues a course of conduct in breach of section 1(1).
Under section 3(1), C may bring a claim against D for an actual or apprehended breach of section 1(1). In such a claim, the court may award damages and/or an injunction.
In other words, breach of the s 1 duty gives rise to liability under the criminal law (s 2(1)) and in tort (s 3(1)).
Note that while the Act creates other related offences (see ss 1(1A), 2, 2A, 4 and 4A), these do not give rise to civil liability for damages (ie, they are not statutory torts). Under s 3A anyone who is the victim of a breach of s 1(1A) can apply for an injunction although there is no right to damages.
To bring a successful claim under section 3, C must show that:
In addition to these, a further limit on liability is that C must be an individual: see s 7(5). It follows that, for example, a company cannot bring a claim for harassment.
While a company cannot bring a claim under the Act, a company can be directly liable under the Act for harassment. Furthermore, it is clear that a company can be vicariously liable for harassment perpetrated by another (such as an employee of the company). (Majrowski v Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Trust [2006] UKHL 34).
Section 1(1) states that D must not pursue a course of conduct which amounts to harassment. S 7(3)(a) provides that a course of conduct must involve conduct on at least two occasions. S 7(4) provides that conduct includes speech.
‘Whether two or more instances can be classified as a ‘course of action’ will depend on such factors as how similar they are in character, the extent to which they are linked, how closely in time they may have occurred, and so on. It is necessary to remember that the mischief to which this statute is directed is that of repetitious behaviour. It is not to be assumed that two instances necessarily give rise to a cause of action in harassment . . .’ (Eady J at [22]).
D and the victim, C, were students who began a relationship. On one occasion, D struck C. Some four months later, when their relationship had ended, D physically threatened C’s new boyfriend in the presence of C. D was convicted by the magistrate of harassment. The Divisional Court allowed D’s appeal and quashed the conviction.
‘We are told . . . that the approach adopted by the learned Magistrate was an essentially mathematical one where he said: “Here are two incidents: one directed at her and one in her presence, albeit directed to someone else, and that shows that there is a course of conduct.” For my part, I think he erred at that point. The situation had changed. One does not know why the first slap was administered. At that stage the relationship was going on. One does not know why the new boyfriend was threatened.’ (Schiemann LJ at [16]).
Six incidents over a nine-month period in what was a volatile relationship in which there was aggression on both sides interspersed with periods of affection were held not amount to a course of conduct.
C, who had previously been employed by D, was acting for a client whom D was suing in debt. In three letters addressed to C, D made various allegations against C, including bigamy and forgery. The CA held that the three letters were capable of amounting to a course of conduct.
‘In my judgment, the Act is concerned with courses of conduct which amount to harassment, rather than with individual instances of harassment. Of course, it is the individual instances which will make up the course of conduct, but it still remains the position that it is the course of conduct which has to have the quality of amounting to harassment, rather than individual instances of conduct . . . Take the typical case of stalking, or of malicious phone calls. When a defendant, D, walks past a claimant C’s door, or calls C’s telephone but puts the phone down without speaking, the single act by itself is neutral, or may be. But if that act is repeated on a number of occasions, the course of conduct may well amount to harassment. That conclusion can only be arrived at by looking at the individual acts complained of as a whole. The course of conduct cannot be reduced to or deconstructed into the individual acts, taken solely one by one. So it is with a course of communications such as letters. A first letter, by itself, may appear innocent and may even cause no alarm, or at most a slight unease. However, in the light of subsequent letters, that first letter may be seen as part of a campaign of harassment. (Rix LJ at [45]).
K made three calls to V’s mobile phone in the course of five minutes in the middle of the night leaving abusive messages on her voicemail. V listened to the messages one after the other the following day. K’s appeal against his conviction under s 2 on the basis that there had been no course of conduct was dismissed.
To amount to actionable harassment, D’s conduct must relate to, and have ‘some direct effect’ on, C (Levi v Bates [2015] EWCA Civ 206 at [33] (Briggs LJ)). As such, D’s conduct must be aimed or targeted at someone:
‘a person may drive his fast sports car on regular occasions through a neighbourhood in a way that causes foreseeable alarm and distress to pedestrians and parents of young children. It may amount to speeding, careless or dangerous driving, but it is not harassment because it is not targeted at anyone at all. The driver is merely selfishly enjoying himself.’ (At [28]).
There is, however, no requirement that D was specifically targeting C. As such, D may be liable to C even though D’s conduct was aimed at T.
C1 and his wife, C2, brought claims under the PfHA against the Ds. D1 was Ken Bates, the then chairman of Leeds United FC. D1 had written various articles in the club’s matchday programmes containing various claims about C1. D1 gave C1’s home address and wrote that readers could find C1’s home telephone number in the telephone directory. C2, who lived with C1, claimed that she suffered alarm and distress as a result of the articles. The judge found that on all bar one occasion, the conduct had not been targeted at C2. The judge dismissed C2’s claim on the ground that there was no course of conduct as against her. The CA allowed C2’s appeal. There was no requirement under the Act that the claimant had to have been the target of the conduct.
‘the ability to bring a harassment claim extends beyond the targeted individual only to those other persons who are foreseeably, and directly, harmed by the course of targeted conduct of which complaint is made, to the extent that they can properly be described as victims of it.’ (At [34]).
‘Harassment is a persistent and deliberate course of unreasonable and oppressive conduct, targeted at another person, which is calculated to and does cause that person alarm, fear or distress . . .’ (Hayes v Willoughby [2013] UKSC 17 at [1] (Lord Sumption)).
The Act itself does not define harassment, although s 7(2) provides that it includes alarming C or causing C distress. As such, it is clearly not the case that ‘any course of conduct which causes alarm or distress therefore amounts to harassment’ (Hayden v Dickenson [2020] EWHC 3291 (QB) at [44] (Nicklin J)).
Further insight on the meaning of harassment comes from the caselaw:
‘courts will have in mind that irritations, annoyances, even a measure of upset, arise at times in everybody’s day-to-day dealings with other people. Courts are well able to recognise the boundary between conduct which is unattractive, even unreasonable, and conduct which is oppressive and unacceptable. To cross the boundary from the regrettable to the unacceptable the gravity of the misconduct must be of an order which would sustain criminal liability under section 2.’ Majrowski v Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Trust [2006] UKHL 34 at [30] (Lord Nicholls)).
‘. . . [C]onduct might be harassment even though no alarm or distress were in fact caused. A great deal is left to the wisdom of the courts to draw sensible lines between the ordinary banter and badinage of life and genuinely offensive and unacceptable behaviour.’ (Majrowski v Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Trust [2006] UKHL 34 at [66] (Lady Hale)).
‘Harassment means the persistent tormenting or irritation of the victim . . . It will . . . usually consist of conduct . . . of an intensely personal character between two individuals . . . This may range from actual physical force or the threat of force to much more subtle but none the less intimidating conduct.’ (Jones v Ruth [2011] EWCA Civ 804 at [24] (Patten LJ)).
C, who was based in Dubai, was the head of the largest media group in Pakistan. D1 was a UK broadcaster and D2 was D1’s chief operating officer. C brought claims in libel and under the PfHA alleging that the Ds had undertaken a campaign of abuse and defamation directed against him through broadcasts over a 12-month period. Sir David Eady gave judgment for C on the libel claim, awarding damages of £185,000. The judge however dismissed the harassment claim on the ground that C had been outside the jurisdiction of England and Wales. Sir David Eady accepted counsel’s submission that the statutory tort of harassment ‘is not complete unless and until it impacts upon the person concerned’ (at [117]).
‘Where harassment is alleged . . . the tort is not complete unless and until it impacts upon the person concerned. One can be libelled without knowing about it at the time, but not so with harassment. It makes no sense to say that a person was harassed but knew nothing about it.’
Sir David Eady at [119]: ‘It is an essential element of [the tort] that the person concerned should be harassed’ and it followed that the defendant’s acts must have an impact on the claimant in England and Wales’.
The Act has been applied in broad range of situations.
C was a local councillor who had been involved with a planning application submitted by D’s company. C alleged that over a period of some four to five years, D had been trailing banners referring to C in derogatory terms from his aircraft above C’s home and dropping leaflets over the surrounding area. D admitted that he had arranged for C to be watched at various times and stated that he wished to make her life a ‘living hell’. Eady J held that D was liable for breach of s 1 PfHA 1997 and granted an injunction against him.
C, a human rights activist living in England and a critic of D, brought a claim for damages for personal injury, based on misuse of private information, harassment, trespass to goods and assault and battery.
C claimed that malicious text messages were sent to him by D. Clicking on the links in the messages, caused Pegasus spyware to be installed on C’s iPhones. The spyware enabled the extraction of data from C’s phones, tracking of the devices together with secret audio and image recording. C also alleged that he was physically attacked in London. C and his iPhones were in England at all material times.
D claimed immunity from suit under the State Immunity Act 1978. C relied on an exception to state immunity under s 5 of the Act which related to personal injury caused by acts or omissions in the UK. For D, it was submitted that s 5 only applied to private law acts and not to sovereign or governmental acts and that it only applied where the whole tort had been committed in the UK.
Julian Knowles J dismissed D’s application and held that C’s action should proceed. S 5 applied to all acts and omissions of a sovereign state and applied provided that an act or omission occurring in the UK was more than a de minimis cause of the personal injury.
The Cs, who lived in the UK, were pro-democracy activists and members of the Bahraini opposition movement. The Cs claimed that D’s agents caused their computers, which were in the UK, to be infected/hacked with a spyware program – FinSpy. The Cs claimed that D’s actions amounted to harassment which caused the Cs to suffer personal injury in the form of psychiatric injury. As such, the Cs argued, D was not immune from suit under State Immunity Act 1978, s 5. For D it was argued that for the purposes of s 5: there had been no act which took place in the UK, that immunity is only lost where all the acts take place in the UK and that personal injury does not include psychiatric injury.
Julian Knowles J rejected D’s arguments and found for the Cs. The Court of Appeal dismissed D’s appeal. Note that the UKSC granted permission to appeal on 1 April 2025.
C was awarded damages of £35,000 for the harassment perpetrated by C’s mother-in-law during the four-month period in which C lived in the household of her husband’s family.
The Cs owned a three-storey terraced house. The Ds owned the adjoining house and the house adjacent to it. Over a period of five years, the Ds undertook an extensive programme of refurbishment to the properties. The Cs brought claims against the Ds for trespass, nuisance, negligence and under PfHA, s 3. The harassment was said to comprise the aggressive and intimidatory manner the Ds had adopted towards the Cs during the building works, their refusal to provide the Cs with information about the progress of the works, and their failure to reduce noise levels and repair damage to the Cs’ property. In addition, the judge found that the Ds, or their children, had dropped notes from an upstairs window containing offensive and threatening comments about lesbians. The Cs, both females, were in a same sex relationship. The CA upheld the judge’s finding that D’s conduct amounted to harassment.
The Ms, a couple and their two children, brought claims under the PfHA against the Bs, a couple, who also had two children. The Ms and the Bs lived on opposite sides of a cul de sac. While relations between the Ms and Bs had initially been friendly, the Bs became concerned about the welfare of the M children and that the children were being left at home without adult supervision. The Bs reported these concerns to the police. One night, the Bs complained about noise coming from the Ms’ house. Mr M went round to the Bs’ house, kicked their front door and shouted racial abuse. M was arrested by the police and was subsequently charged with using racially aggravated words or behaviour. M subsequently contacted the police, accusing Mr B of having deliberately driven his car at him. M also sent a letter to neighbours in which he wrote that Mr and Mrs B had been stalking and intimidating the M children. The judge dismissed the Ms’ claim but upheld the Bs’ counterclaim for harassment as against Mr M. The judge awarded the Bs £7,000 each in damages and granted an injunction.
C brought an action against his employer, D, for unlawful harassment of C by his manager, F, in breach of section 1 PfHA 1997. C alleged that he had been bullied and intimidated by F and that she had been rude, abusive and excessively critical of his work. He further alleged that her actions were motivated by homophobia, C being a gay man. C brought no claim against F. The County Court judge struck out the case on the ground that section 3 did not create a statutory tort for which an employer could be vicariously liable. The CA reversed the judge’s decision and the HL dismissed D’s appeal and held that the case should be permitted to proceed to trial.
Claims by C and five other police officers that they had been subject to harassment by a detective chief inspector were dismissed.
‘The question is whether this conduct constituted harassment. I have concluded that it did not. This was a stressful working environment in which case-hardened officers were dealing with career-hardened criminals. Although this was more than simply a clash of personalities, it was not conduct which was calculated to cause distress and, although it was unacceptable, it was not oppressive in the sense described in the cases. It was not a tormenting by constant interference or intimidation. Rather it was a curt and dismissive attitude which was likely to have the effect, even if unintended, of undermining both [C’s] own self-confidence and the esteem in which he was held by others.’ (2010] EWHC 2612 (QB) at [278] (Simon J).
C was employed by D as a full-time driver. Following her return from sick leave, C was told that there was no longer a job for her and that she had to repay one month’s salary. Following reinstatement, C was again signed off on sick leave. While still on sick leave, C was given a written warning and then dismissed. Nicola Davies J held that each of these incidents amounted to oppressive and unacceptable conduct under the PfHA. So too was D’s failure to remove sexually explicit and offensive photographs from the walls of a restroom used by C. Furthermore, because C was the only full-time driver using the restroom, the conduct could be construed as being directed against her. However, the requirement that D work long and unpredictable hours was not oppressive and unacceptable conduct. This was part of the job and had been known to C when she accepted the position.
The Cs were companies, and individual employees of those companies, who had dealings with Huntingdon Life Sciences. The Ds were unincorporated groups, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, the Animal Liberation Front and the Animal Rights Militia and individuals involved with those groups. The activities about which the Cs complained, included: threatening letters and phone calls; publication and distribution of letters alleging that various individuals were paedophiles/sex offenders; letters containing excrement and material said to contain the AIDS virus; damage to cars; painting slogans on property; smashing windows; fire-bombings; setting off fireworks and carrying out protests outside homes; and physical assaults. Owen J granted interim injunctions to the individual, ie, non-corporate, Cs.
Animal rights protesters situated outside the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford sought to disrupt graduation ceremonies taking place inside by shouting and chanting. Treacy J held that the defendants’ conduct did not amount to harassment.
‘None of the evidence shows that the shouting or chanting taking place intermittently during the various ceremonies was of itself threatening or menacing . . . The University’s witnesses speak of the effect of the chanting being to reduce the enjoyment of, and the sense of, a solemn occasion. They speak of irritating and distasteful noise. They speak of an unjustifiable intrusion by noise which ruined or spoilt the ceremony . . .
Nowhere in the University’s evidence does any witness speak of feeling harassed, alarmed or threatened. The language is all in terms of irritation and the loss of enjoyment . . .’ ([2008] EWHC 75 (QB) at [32]-[33] (Treacey J)).
C owed money to a company owned by D, an international kick-boxing champion who had in the past a reputation for extreme violence. Nicol J held that while D’s initial conduct in pressing C for payment by email and text message, did not amount to harassment, the line was crossed when D referred in an email to being tempted to beat C to within an inch of his life. D re-sent the email to C several times over the following days. D also left telephone messages threatening C with physical violence.
C had switched from D to a different gas supplier. Over the next few months D sent C numerous computer-generated letters wrongly demanding payment of sums owing and threatening legal proceedings, disconnection of her gas supply and reporting her to credit reference agencies. CA held that C had an arguable claim for harassment.
C had accounts with the Halifax Building Society, part of D’s bank. At times C exceed her overdraft and credit limits, but only by relatively modest amounts. Over a 14-month period, the bank called or attempted to call C 547 times to discuss her financial situation. The CA upheld the judge’s finding that D was liable for harassment.
‘The existence of a debt, however, does not give the creditor the right to bombard the debtor with endless and repeated telephone calls. The debtor is fully entitled to say that he or she does not wish to talk to the creditor. In those circumstances, the creditor is thrown back upon his formal legal remedies. That is what the courts are there to provide . . .
In the present case, the claimant made it abundantly plain that she did not wish to receive telephone calls from the bank. She was perfectly entitled to adopt this position. Once the bank had tried to telephone the claimant a few times and had received the same response on each occasion, it was obvious that telephoning the claimant would achieve nothing. Thereafter, there was no possible justification for continuing to ring the claimant up.’ ([2013] EWCA Civ 882 at [37]-[38] (Jackson LJ)).
C was an independent financial adviser. He was contacted by D’s employees on three occasions: once by letter, once by telephone, once by email in connection with a review into pension mis-selling. The CA held the recorder had been right to dismiss C’s claim.
‘this conduct comes nowhere near crossing the threshold. It is not even at the front garden gate . . . I echo the words of Ward LJ in Sunderland City Council v Conn at [19]: what on earth is the world coming to if conduct of the kind that occurred in this case can be thought to be harassment, potentially liable to giving rise to criminal proceedings punishable with imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, and to a claim for damages for anxiety and financial loss?’ (Lewison LJ at [31])
C’s daughter alleged that she had been raped by C’s ex-partner. DC Hull visited C several times to take a statement from her, each visit lasting several hours. Hull asked C to recount in detail her sexual history with her ex-partner. At various times, C became upset at which point C would D put his arms around her purporting to comfort her. On one occasion, Hull kissed C’s neck while rubbing her thigh with his hand before touching her buttocks. C’s claim for harassment under the 1997 Act was upheld.
The Sun newspaper published a story in which it was said that two police sergeants had been demoted following a complaint about comments they had made about a Somali asylum-seeker. The story stated that the complaint had been made by C, whom it named and described as a black clerk. The article also named the police station at which the incident had occurred. A second article was published which said that Sun readers had been furious about the story of the demoted officers. The article then set out extracts from various readers’ letters. On the same day the police station received three letters amounting to ‘hate mail’ addressed to C. A third story was published by The Sun in which it again stated that the complaint had been made by a black clerk. C claimed that as a result of these articles and the hate mail, she had been too scared to go to work. The County Court judge refused D’s application to strike out C’s claim. The Court of Appeal dismissed D’s appeal. C had an arguable case that, taken together, the three articles comprised a course of conduct amounting to harassment of C. It was arguable that the reference to C being black was gratuitous and that the articles were misleading in that they failed to mention that a white officer had also given evidence against the two sergeants. Furthermore, it was significant that the newspaper had published C’s name and the name of the police station. For, arguably, it would have been foreseeable that disclosing this information would lead Sun readers to send hostile letters to C at work.
Lord Philips MR (with whom Jonathan Parker LJ and Lord Mustill agreed):
‘[31] The fact that conduct that is reasonable will not constitute harassment is clear from section 1(3)(c) of the Act. While that subsection places the burden of proof on the defendant, that does not absolve the claimant from pleading facts which are capable of amounting to harassment . . .
[32] Whether conduct is reasonable will depend upon the circumstances of the particular case. When considering whether the conduct of the press in publishing articles is reasonable for the purposes of the 1997 Act, the answer does not turn upon whether opinions expressed in the article are reasonably held. The question must be answered by reference to the right of the press to freedom of expression which has been so emphatically recognised by the jurisprudence both of Strasbourg and this country . . .
[34] In general, press criticism, even if robust, does not constitute unreasonable conduct and does not fall within the natural meaning of harassment. A pleading, which does no more than allege that the defendant newspaper has published a series of articles that have foreseeably caused distress to an individual, will be susceptible to a strike-out on the ground that it discloses no arguable case of harassment.
[35] It is common ground between the parties to this appeal, and properly so, that before press publications are capable of constituting harassment, they must be attended by some exceptional circumstance which justifies sanctions and the restriction on the freedom of expression that they involve. It is also common ground that such circumstances will be rare . . .
[37] . . . the parties are agreed that the publication of press articles calculated to incite racial hatred of an individual provides an example of conduct which is capable of amounting to harassment under the 1997 Act.
[49] When the three publications are considered together . . . I am satisfied that the respondent has pleaded an arguable case that the appellants harassed her by publishing racist criticism of her which was foreseeably likely to stimulate a racist reaction on the part of their readers and cause her distress.’
C brought an action in respect of articles published by D in the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. C worked in public relations and journalism and acted as press officer to Chris Huhne, a senior Liberal Democrat MP, during the May 2010 General Election campaign. In June 2010 Chris Huhne revealed that he was in a relationship with C. As a result, Huhne and his wife separated and subsequently divorced. C’s relationship with her civil partner also came to an end. C alleged that D published numerous articles in which repeated references were made to her being bisexual and lesbian as well as to her physical appearance. C relied, inter alia, on the PfHA.
Tugendhat J dismissed the claim. While the articles were insulting and offensive in so far as they referred to C’s personal appearance and clothing, the reasonable reader would not have regarded D’s use of the words ‘bisexual’ and ‘lesbian’ as insulting or offensive. D’s hostility was aimed at C’s conduct (in deceiving her civil partner while CH was deceiving his wife) and not her sexuality. In addition, it was relevant that C’s article 8 rights were very limited. In part this was because she was not a purely private figure but also because she had been open about her sexuality and sexual relationships.
C brought claims against five defendants, for libel and harassment against D1, D2, D3 and D4 and for harassment against D5 (the limitation period for a claim in libel having expired by the time C was able to identify D5). C alleged that he, along with his brother and brother in law, had been the targets of a campaign directed by D5 and carried out by all the Ds. The campaign comprised two demonstrations held in London (at which ‘protesters’ were paid to attend and hold up placards and banners) along with online publications and the physical fixing of stickers to lampposts and other street furniture in London. The gist of the campaign was that C and the other two targets were responsible for the sexual assault, torture and murder of a young woman in Lebanon.
Warby J held that all the Ds, save for D3, were liable and awarded damages totalling £80,000 as well as injunctions.
As for the claims under the PfHA, Warby J held that D5 had organised and was responsible for a course of conduct which was sufficiently oppressive, unreasonable and harmful to amount to harassment under the Act. He held that the course of conduct had not been pursued for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime and had not been reasonable in all the circumstances. The effects of the campaign on C were ‘harsh and crushing’ (at [152]). Warby J held that by participating in part or all of the campaign D1, D2 and D4 had also each pursued a course of conduct which amounted to harassment.
Warby J also held that C should be permitted to pursue a claim against D5 for disclosure of the identities of those persons who had engaged him to carry out the campaign.
The Cs, originally from Cameroon, moved to the UK from France with their nine children. The Ds were the publishers of various national newspapers and operators of related website. In 2016, C1 contacted a local newspaper, the MK Citizen, which then published a story in which C1 criticised the local council, saying that his family needed a bigger council house. Subsequently the Ds published various articles containing derogatory comments about the Cs. These articles resulted in members of the public posting their own comments, many of which were abusive, racist and threatening.
Warby J dismissed the Cs’ claims under the PfHA and the Data Protection Act 1998. As for the claim under the PfHA, Warby J held that the Cs had not discharged the heavy burden of establishing that the Ds’ conduct amounted to an abuse of media freedom so serious that it deserved the label of criminality. Even if the Cs had established that the Ds’ course of conduct amounted to harassment, they had not shown that the Ds knew or ought to have known that this was so.
Citing from Tugendhat J’s judgment in the Trimingham case, Warby J noted (at [68]) that ’[i]n general, the techniques of reporting, including the tone and editorial decisions about content, are matters for the media and not the Court to determine’ and that ‘[t]he court’s assessment of the harmful tendency of the statements complained of must always be objective, and not swayed by the subjective feelings of the claimant’.
C regarded herself as a minor public figure known for her involvement in transgender issues. She claimed that D’s Twitter and Facebook posts which made reference to a spent criminal conviction amounted to harassment. Nicklin J declined to continue the interim injunction which C had obtained on an ex parte basis. An injunction was not necessary as the conditions of D’s bail prohibited her from pursuing the conduct which was the subject of the injunction application.
C was the Director of Public Health at Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council. In a video shared on SMBC’s Facebook page, C had told of her mental health struggles, that she had self-harmed and had been close to being sectioned under the Mental Health Act. D claimed to be a ‘citizen journalist’ who published his own blog as well as posting on Twitter. In his blogs and posts, D questioned whether in the midst of a global pandemic, C should be posting about her own mental health issues rather than focusing on public health in Sandwell and whether C had disclosed her health record when applying for her position with SMBC. In subsequent posts, D questioned C’s medical qualifications, called her ‘publicity seeking’ and a ‘weirdo’ and stated that she was ‘crap at her job’. He also disclosed that C had blocked him on Twitter. C sought damages from D and an injunction on the ground that D’s blog articles and posts amounted to harassment of her contrary to the PFHA, s 3. D applied for, and Chamberlain J granted, summary judgment (ie, C’s claim was dismissed without a trial).
C1 sought an interim injunction under the PfHA against D1. C1 was the managing director of C2, Cornices Centre Ltd, a company manufacturing plaster coving products.
In November 2023 D1 posted to his YouTube channel a video of an incident in which one of C2’s vans passed dangerously close to the bike he was riding while overtaking him. D1 added a description to the video stating ‘Cornices Centre? I don’t think I’ll be bothering with any fancy plaster work from yourselves. Wouldn’t want a road death on my conscience if one happened whilst you were out driving.’
C1 emailed D1 asking him to remove C2’s name from the video description on the ground that it was damaging C2’s reputation and amounted to trade mark infringement. D1 then posted an update on his YouTube channel saying that C1 had threatened him with legal action for trade mark infringement.
Following this second post, C2 started receiving hostile and abusive messages via its website, some of which were directed at C1. C1 sought an interim injunction against D1.
Aidan Eardley KC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, refused to grant the injunction. While it was likely that at trial C1 would establish that D1 had behaved unreasonably, it was not likely that C1 would establish that D1’s conduct had ‘crossed the line’ to become ‘unacceptable and oppressive’ (at [53]).
The claim arose out of the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017 in which 22 people were murdered. The Cs, a father and daughter, were both very seriously injured in the attack. D, who claimed to be an investigative journalist, published various videos and a book in which he asserted, among other things that the Arena attack had been staged and that the Cs had not been present and had not been injured. The Cs brought claims, inter alia, under the PfHA. In February 2024, summary judgment was given on a number of preliminary issues including that the Cs had as a matter of fact been present and injured at the Arena attack. Following the trial of the claim, Steyn J (Mrs) held that:
Cs sought an injunction requiring D to cease publishing the ‘Solicitors from Hell’ website. Cs brought the claim as a representative action on behalf of those featured on the website and those who might be in the future. Cs relied on libel, harassment and the DPA 1998. Tugendhat J granted a perpetual injunction under the PfHA.
C had stored on her mobile phone intimate photographs of herself which she had taken for her boyfriend’s benefit. The phone was lost or stolen, and shortly afterwards the photographs were made available online. The images were uploaded with C’s name added with the result that the images were readily searchable. C was granted an interim injunction for breach of the PfHA 1997, s 1.
Section 1(2) provides that ‘[f]or the purposes of [section 1(1)], the person whose course of conduct is in question ought to know that it amounts to . . . harassment of another if a reasonable person in possession of the same information would think the course of conduct amounted to . . . harassment of the other’.
C had written a series of abusive and threatening letters to R, his MP. R had as a result feared attack and had experienced nightmares. It was accepted that C suffered from schizophrenia. C claimed that the hypothetical reasonable person referred to in section 1(2) should be endowed with the relevant characteristics of the particular defendant. It followed, C submitted, that his conduct was to be judged by the standards of the hypothetical reasonable schizophrenic. The Court of Appeal rejected C’s argument.
‘. . . As is well-known the Act was passed with the phenomenon of “stalking” particularly, although not exclusively, in mind. The conduct at which the Act is aimed, and from which it seeks to provide protection, is particularly likely to be conduct pursued by those of obsessive or otherwise unusual psychological make-up and very frequently by those suffering from an identifiable mental illness. Schizophrenia is only one such condition which is obviously very likely to give rise to conduct of this sort.
We are satisfied that to give the Act the construction for which [counsel for C] contends would be to remove from its protection a very large number of victims and indeed to run the risk of significantly thwarting the purpose of the Act.’ (Hughes J, delivering the judgment of the CA, at [18]–[19]).
As already noted, s 1(3) in effect provides possible defences. A defendant has no liability under the Act where his course of conduct was
D alleged that C had engaged in fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion while managing a number of companies, of one of which D was an employee. D wrote to the police, the Official Receiver and the DTI among others as well making approaches to C’s ex-wife, GP and landlord. When C brought a claim under the PfHA 1997 for damages and an injunction, D sought, inter alia, to rely on the defence under s 1(3)(a) – the conduct was pursued for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime. The CA reversed the judge’s decision that D could rely on the defence. The Supreme Court dismissed D’s appeal. The SC held that the test was neither wholly objective nor wholly subjective. Instead, the necessary control mechanism comprised a test of rationality, which was not the same as reasonableness.
A court can award damages and/or an injunction for breach of s 1.
For the facts, see above. The judge found that the harassment had caused both Cs anxiety and distress, for which he awarded damages. In addition, the judge found that the harassment had caused C1 to suffer psychiatric injury, whereby her anxiety was subconsciously converted into severe physical back pain. The judge refused to award C1 damages for personal injury on the ground that such injury had not been reasonably foreseeable. The CA allowed C1’s appeal on this point. There was no requirement under the Act for the claimant to show that the injury or loss caused by the harassment had been foreseeable.
‘Section 1 is concerned with deliberate conduct of a kind which the defendant knows or ought to know will amount to harassment of the claimant. Once that is proved the defendant is responsible in damages for the injury and loss which flow from that conduct’ (Patten LJ at [32]).
An injunction may be awarded to restrain an anticipated course of conduct as well as to restrain continuation or repetition of the conduct.
Note that while the court may award damages and/or an injunction, it may decide to award neither notwithstanding that breach of the s 1 duty has been made out.
A retired solicitor, B, brought claims against a sex worker, D, with whom he had had a lengthy but volatile relationship, for misuse of private information, breach of confidentiality and harassment. D brought a counterclaim for harassment. B’s claim for harassment was dismissed. While D’s actions in emailing B’s colleagues and others amounted to a course of conduct, it could not be said that the conduct had been objectively likely to cause B distress. Nor had it actually caused B distress, as opposed to embarrassment. Further, while D’s conduct might be held to have been unacceptable it had not been oppressive. D’s claim for harassment, on the other hand, was upheld. B’s exploitative and manipulative behaviour, in which, inter alia, he had threatened to disclose to D’s parents and others that she was a sex worker, had caused D some distress and amounted to harassment. However, Tugendhat J declined to award damages. D had chosen to keep B as a client notwithstanding her experience of his behaviour. Had her distress been more than passing, she would have ceased to have any contact with him. Furthermore, the likelihood of B repeating his conduct was not such as to justify the granting of an injunction against him.
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