Longhurst Homes Ltd v Killen

There is no tariff for contempt committed by breaching an injunction. The sentence depends on the facts, and an incremental approach is permissible but not obligatory. Imprisonment serves both to punish disobedience of the court’s order and to protect its beneficiaries by securing future compliance.

Deliberate and repeated breaches may justify immediate imprisonment. More serious breaches committed after an explicit judicial warning may attract longer sentences consecutive to those imposed for earlier breaches. An appellate court should intervene only where the sentence falls outside the bracket legitimately available to the sentencing judge.

A county court judge sentenced Dean Killen to nine months’ imprisonment for 15 breaches of an anti-social behaviour injunction. The injunction prohibited him from entering a specified street and from assaulting, threatening or abusing residents and their families.

The sentence comprised concurrent terms of three months for initial threatening communications, followed by concurrent terms of six months for more serious breaches committed after the judge had expressly warned him that further offending would result in a substantial sentence. Killen appealed on the ground that the total sentence was manifestly excessive, relying principally on the absence of actual violence, his partial admissions and the fact that this was his first committal for breach of the injunction.

1. Appeal dismissed. The nine-month sentence was stiff, but it remained within the bracket legitimately available to the county court judge. The Court of Appeal could not substitute the sentence it might itself have imposed. Intervention was justified only if the sentencing judge had exceeded that permissible bracket.

2. There is no tariff for contempt of court because every case depends on its own facts. Courts frequently begin with a short custodial sentence and increase later sentences incrementally, as illustrated by Sandwell MBC v Preece [2007] EWCA Civ 1009. That approach is not compulsory. Leicester City Council v Lewis [2000] 33 HLR 37 demonstrated that a substantial sentence could properly be imposed for a single breach.

3. Immediate imprisonment was justified because the breaches were deliberate and repeated. Imprisonment for breach of an injunction has two purposes: to punish disobedience of the court’s order and to protect the beneficiaries by securing future compliance. Although punishment is directed principally at the disobedience, the nature of the conduct commonly supplies the measure of the breach’s gravity.

4. The judge was entitled to impose longer sentences for the second group of breaches and to make them consecutive to those for the first group. The later breaches were more serious and had been committed in flagrant disregard of an explicit judicial warning. The sentencing judge had also seen Killen twice and was well placed to assess the sentence required to punish past disobedience and promote compliance.

5. Hughes LJ added that a person imprisoned for contempt may apply to the sentencing court to purge the contempt by establishing genuine regret and a genuine promise about future conduct. Ward and Sedley LJJ agreed with Hughes LJ’s judgment.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): The appeal was dismissed. The nine-month sentence was held to fall within the bracket legitimately available to the sentencing judge: [2008] EWCA Civ 402.

2. Lincoln County Court: Her Honour Judge Swindells imposed a total sentence of nine months’ imprisonment for 15 breaches of an anti-social behaviour injunction.