The Post Office and Fujitsu have succeeded in splitting up claims of fraud brought by one of the highest-profile victims of the Horizon IT scandal.
Former sub-postmaster Lee Castleton, who was made bankrupt by the Post Office and then compensated with an initial £20,000 in the 2019 group settlement, appeared in the Rolls Building on Friday to set out details of his claim and arguing against splitting the trial. It is understood that the claim could be worth as much as £8m.
The Post Office and Horizon operator Fujitsu both argued in favour of splitting the trial, saying the costs savings for all parties would be ‘very significant’.
Castleton’s case centres on two sets of legal proceedings: the court judgment obtained by the Post Office against him in 2007 and the group litigation that was settled at the end of 2019. Castleton was one of more than 550 former sub-postmasters who split around £58m, before the deduction of costs.
In the 2007 judgment, Castleton was ordered by the court to pay back more than £25,000 which the Post Office maintained was missing from his branch in Bridlington. He also had to pay the Post Office’s costs of £321,000.
Castleton’s lawyers told the High Court on Friday that the Post Office’s claim against him had been ‘false’ and dishonestly obtained’ by the deliberate withholding of material evidence. Castleton further claims that he was the victim of an unlawful means conspiracy between the Post Office and Fujitsu to injure him.
The second part of Castleton’s claim, relating to the 2019 settlement deed, alleges that the settlement was agreed following ‘misleading and untrue statements’ made to the court by the Post Office in the preceding Horizon Issues trial in respect of knowledge about bugs in the Horizon IT system.
Castleton’s lawyers told the court that the Post Office ‘routinely simply withheld evidential material considered ‘unhelpful’’ and ‘fraudulently misrepresented’ reasons for not calling Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins at the Horizon Issue trial, which in turn induced the group claimants to settle.
Post Office contests Castleton’s claims and argued for a split trial. Its lawyers told the court on Friday that if the first part was successfully defended, this would dispose of the entirety of the proceedings and save very substantial time and cost.
They added: ‘POL is concerned not only to ensure that it does not incur unnecessary cost, but also that Mr Castleton does not have to either. ‘It should be observed that POL is defending this claim not because [Castelton] is not entitled to redress – he plainly is – but rather because POL considers that the correct route to that redress is through the compensation scheme designed specifically to support postmasters who were in the GLO claimants group.’
Mr Justice Trower said the claim will be split in two and his reasons published in due course.
Following the ruling, a spokesperson for the Post Office said: ‘We are pleased that the court has decided in favour of progressing to a split trial. We believe that it is in the interests of all parties that the preliminary issues are resolved as quickly as possible so that this claim can reach resolution in a timely and cost-efficient manner. Our priority remains that Mr Castleton and all other affected postmasters get fair resolution and closure, and we remain hopeful that this matter can be resolved via the existing Horizon redress scheme.’
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