Hatch v Thames Valley Police Authority & Anor

Conduct arising from a marriage or separation is not outside the scope of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. A civil harassment claim requires a qualifying course of conduct. Not every course of conduct intended to annoy constitutes harassment. Where incidents are few and widely spaced, the court must consider whether they are sufficiently connected in type and context. A divorce court’s satisfaction that a spouse behaved unreasonably does not establish every allegation in the petition or create issue estoppel where the allegations were not specifically determined after adversarial testing. Procedural irregularity without prejudice, trial-management decisions, and factual findings correctly reached at first instance provide no sufficient basis for appellate intervention.

The applicant brought proceedings against his former wife under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, alleging a course of conduct between 1998 and 2000. Proceedings also named the Chief Constable of the Thames Valley Police, but the claims were divided for separate trials. The Oxford County Court dismissed the claim against the former wife on 15 July 2005.

On a renewed oral application, the applicant argued that the divorce proceedings established his allegations by estoppel, that the conduct amounted to a qualifying course under the Act, that the defence should have complied more fully with CPR 16(5), and that the trial was procedurally unfair. The central issues were whether the divorce proceedings had preclusive effect and whether the judge had erred in law or procedure.

Lord Justice Gage refused the renewed application for permission to appeal. The appeal had no realistic prospect of success. There was no order for costs.

1. Procedural pleading point. The failure to amend the defence might have been a breach of CPR 16(5), but it caused no prejudice. The respondent’s witness statement had been served well before trial, set out the substance of her evidence, and did not take the applicant by surprise.
2. Effect of the divorce proceedings. The divorce court’s conclusion under section 1 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 that the marriage had broken down because of unreasonable behaviour did not authenticate or establish particular allegations in the petition. There had been no detailed consideration or adversarial testing of those allegations. Accordingly, neither res judicata nor issue estoppel arose. The parties’ signed note, recording that neither had made admissions, placed the matter beyond doubt.
3. Harassment and matrimonial conduct. The judge had correctly directed himself on the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. The Act was not confined to stalking or conduct outside a matrimonial relationship. As illustrated by R v Hills [2001] FLR 580, conduct involving an estranged spouse could in an appropriate case qualify. Following Pratt v DPP [2001] EWHC Admin, 483, where incidents were few and widely spaced, the question was whether they were sufficiently connected in type and context to amount to a course of conduct. The judge was entitled to conclude that the established matters were sporadic manifestations of dislike, not a calculated course causing alarm or distress.
4. Facts and fairness. The Court of Appeal rarely interfered with first-instance findings of primary fact. Decisions whether to require an opening speech and how much cross-examination to permit were matters for the trial judge’s discretion. Nothing in the papers established that the applicant had been denied a fair trial or that the factual findings were unsustainable.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): On 2 November 2005, refused the renewed application for permission to appeal and made no order for costs.
• Oxford County Court: On 15 July 2005, dismissed the applicant’s claim against his former wife under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.