Defendants convicted of cruelty to animals - defendants continuing to keep animals in breach of order of magistrates' court - High Court having no jurisdiction to grant injunction permitting local authority to go onto defendants' land and seize animals

Worcestershire County Council v Tongue and others: ChD (Mr Justice Neuberger): 6 August 2003

The defendants were convicted of various offences under the Protection of Animals Act 1911 and, as a result, were disqualified from having custody of any animal, save for cats and dogs, for life.

The defendants failed to dispose of their livestock and they were found guilty of breaching the disqualification order.

The prosecuting local authority sought an injunction from the High Court permitting it to enter the defendants' land in order to remove their cattle.

David Watson (instructed by the Head of Legal Services, Worcestershire County Council, Worcester) for the local authority; the defendants in person.

Held, dismissing the application, that the civil courts had jurisdiction, at the suit of the local authority, to restrain a person who, in breach of an order of the magistrates' court, had custody of animals; but that the court could only grant an injunction entitling the authority's agents to go onto a person's land in order to remove property where the authority had to establish some sort of right in respect of that property; that, although the authority had a right to take in abandoned animals and treat them appropriately, an animal on the land, and in the custody, of a disqualified person could not be treated as constructively abandoned; and that, accordingly, the High Court did not have jurisdiction to grant the order sought.