Corporate claimants seeking injunctive relief to restraining harassment - corporate entity not 'person' - injunctive relief not available to corporate claimants

Daiichi UK Ltd and others v Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty and others; Asahi Glass UK Ltd and others v Same; Eisai Ltd and others v Same; Yamanouchi Pharma UK Ltd and others v Same; Sankyo Pharma UK Ltd and others v Same: QBD (Mr Justice Owen): 14 October 2003

The defendants, whose stated objective was the closure of laboratories run by H where live animal experiments were conducted, had identified the claimant companies as 'Japanese customers' of H.

The claimants sought, by way of representative actions, interlocutory injunctive relief under section 3 of the Protection From Harassment Act 1997, on the ground that the defendants had carried out a campaign of unlawful harassment directed at H and its employees and its customers and suppliers of goods and services.

Timothy Lawson-Cruttenden, solicitor-advocate (of Lawson-Cruttenden & Co) for the claimants; Martin Westgate (instructed by Birnberg Peirce & Partners) for the defendants.

Held, granting the relief sought only to those of the claimants who were natural persons, that the word 'person' in the provisions prohibiting harassment in section 1 of the 1997 Act did not, on its proper construction, embrace a corporate entity; that there the defendants' conduct amounted to 'harassment' within the meaning of the 1997 Act; and that, since the individual claimants and their fellow employees of the companies in question had the same interest in the proceedings, namely not to be harassed by animal rights activists, it was appropriate that the proceedings be brought as representative proceedings pursuant to rule 19.6 of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998.