Medway Council v Root (5)

In committal proceedings, contempt must be proved to the criminal standard. The order said to have been breached must be clear on its face as to what it prohibits or requires. Any ambiguity is resolved in favour of the respondent.

Where an injunction prohibited publication of court papers or details specific to proceedings contained in those papers, the court could not be sure that spoken material in a recording fell within the words requiring information to come into an unauthorised person’s possession. A later order prohibiting publication of any details relating to the proceedings had a wider, sufficiently clear scope. Sentence for contempt must mark disapproval and secure future compliance. A custodial sentence may be suspended where that remains appropriate to secure compliance.

The case concerned a local authority’s committal application against the mother of two children who had been the subject of care proceedings. Earlier orders prohibited publication of court papers and information relating to those proceedings. The mother had published or shared recordings and written material on Facebook.

The local authority alleged breaches of both the earlier injunction and a later order made on 28 September 2017. The mother accepted some breaches of the later order. She applied to strike out the committal application because of procedural failures, including defective service and non-compliance with directions. The central issues were whether the procedural defects caused injustice or unfairness, whether the alleged publications fell within the orders, and what sentence was appropriate.

1. Strike out. The local authority’s failure to comply with the March order was inexcusable, but the amended application had been available to the respondent for about six weeks and no adjournment or further time was sought. The defects therefore caused no injustice or unfairness sufficient to justify striking out the application. Breaches 1 and 2 were struck out because the March order had directed their deletion and no permission had been obtained to reinstate them.
2. Standard and clarity. The burden was on the local authority to prove each breach beyond reasonable doubt. The terms of the relevant order had to be clear on their face. Ambiguity was likely to prevent contempt being established to the required standard.
3. 2011 order. The court was not sure that recordings in which the respondent spoke about the proceedings constituted allowing copies of court papers or details specific to the proceedings contained in those papers to come into an unauthorised person’s possession. The context of the order and the evidence supporting it focused on hard-copy documents. No breach of the 2011 order was established.
4. 2017 order. The later order prohibited publication of any details relating to the public law proceedings. Breaches 3, 4, 5 and 8 were established. Breach 6 was not proved because the available summary did not establish that the material related to the proceedings. Breach 7 was also not proved because its content lacked a sufficient connection with them.
5. Sentence. The court imposed concurrent terms of six months for breaches 3 and 4 and three months for breaches 5 and 8, producing a total sentence of six months. The sentence was suspended for 12 months on condition that the respondent complied with the injunction made that day. The earlier suspended committal order was discharged. The court warned that further proved breaches could result in immediate custody.
6. The committal judgments and the March 2018 judgment were directed to be published with anonymisation and reporting restrictions protecting the children.

The judgment records that the respondent’s appeal against HHJ Polden’s earlier findings was dismissed by the Court of Appeal on 22 November 2017. The present judgment was a first-instance determination of the subsequent committal application and related publication issues.