A solicitor who bombarded a legal blogger with messages containing 'aggressive threats of litigation and uninvited sexual innuendo’ has been convicted of stalking.

Andrew Jonathan Milne, 63, admitted in 1986, was convicted of stalking without fear after a seven-day trial at Stratford magistrates’ court. He had denied the charge but District Judge Towell found that his conduct towards court blogger Daniel Cloake in 2024, which included sending around 120 emails to Cloake, leaving two voicemails on his birthday, sending him a book and ‘loitering outside’ Cloake’s home, amounted to harassment. 

The judge gave her verdict following a full day of closing submissions yesterday. She highlighted evidence contradicting Milne's claim of an intimate relationship with Cloake, adding: ‘Your account there was a relationship is wholly contrary to the content of the emails you sent.’

The judge said: ‘Mr Cloake asserts there was no form of relationship beyond exchanging of pleasantries at court hearings and two lunches at the Law Society. I accept Mr Cloake’s evidence that was the extent of his interactions with you.’

The court previously heard Milne sent around 124 ‘pieces of communication’ including an unwanted gift to Cloake, while doorbell footage showed Milne at Cloake’s home, following two lunches at the Law Society.

Milne had claimed Cloake had told him he was in love with him and that he had been stalked by Cloake prior to the date of the allegations. Cloake said in his evidence he had emailed the solicitor only once. 

Dismissing Milne’s allegations, the judge said she was ‘sure [Cloake] did not stalk you, that he did not follow you, that he did not attend your address, that he did not leave you notes’.

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She added: ‘I am sure you pursued a course of conduct. You sent 120 emails between 1 March 2024 and 2 August 2024. You attended his home address on one occasion, you gave him a book as a birthday gift and left two voicemails. Mr Cloake responded to only one of those emails.’

The court heard Cloake’s response was a ‘thanks’ to an email about timings in relation to a case he was following and there was ‘no response to any of the remaining pieces of communication’.

She said Cloake’s ‘wall of silence’ to Milne’s correspondence, which she described as ‘oppressive and unreasonable’, made it clear the communication was unwanted. Giving judgment she said Cloake described Milne’s communications as a ‘tidal wave he could not escape’ and he ‘described feeling unnerved, worried and scared’.

‘I am sure Mr Cloake was caused alarm and distress by your course of conduct.’

She said when Milne’s emails and phonecalls went unanswered the ‘tone of emals became increasingly erratic’ and included threats of litigation. Milne was ‘trying to provoke a response from Mr Cloake', the judge said, adding that Milne’s evidence that litigation threats were a joke was ‘not credible’.

Finding Milne guilty, she said he ‘ought to have known’ his conduct amounted to harassment’ and would ‘cause distress’. ‘Your conduct involved aggressive threats of litigation and uninvited sexual innuendo.’ 

Milne, who sat in the dock and did not react as the judge handed down her verdict, will be sentenced at Thames magistrates’ court next month.