Judgment embargo breach leads to High Court advice but no further action

The High Court has suggested a legal representative may need to explain ‘specifically’ who can and cannot be shown a judgment after the latest breach of a judgment embargo.

In Steven Ellis & Ors v John Benson Limited Mr Justice Freedman said the court would not initiate committal proceedings following the ‘prompt steps’ taken to limit the breach’s impact ‘insofar as this is possible’.

According to the judgment, the breach happened when John Benson, a party in the King’s Bench case, emailed his witnesses informing them of the outcome of the trial. He told the court he had ‘wrongly assumed that as they had attended the trial…to give evidence, that they were a party to the proceedings and the outcome could be shared with them’. He did not tell the witnesses about the embargo.

Benson added that he ‘did not check this with my legal representative’.

The judge said the court was ‘willing to accept that Mr Benson acted in a mistaken belief as to the effect of the embargo’. Mitigation, the judgment said, included that the case did not involve price sensitive or highly personal information, as soon as the defendant’s solicitors were informed of the breach they took ‘prompt steps’ to advise Benson to contact the witnesses and to seek undertakings from them and Benson’s apology.

Deciding to take no further action, the judge said: ‘Without criticism of the solicitors for [Benson], the history of this case shows that consideration should be given where appropriate on the facts of the case for the legal representative to identify and advise specifically who can and who cannot know about the judgment and the limited purposes for which it is to be seen. Having identified those individuals (who must be parties), each one should be informed and advised about the terms of the embargo.’