VARIOUS CLAIMANTS v MGN LIMITED

An order requiring claimants to plead by reference to generic particulars of common facts and issues does not prevent a claimant from pleading different material that concerns a distinct form of alleged unlawful information-gathering. Its purpose is to prevent duplication, or slight variants, of material already pleaded generically, so that the defendant need answer it once.

Accordingly, an early-disclosure regime may extend to landline telephone numbers where the individual claim form pleads unlawful information-gathering involving landlines. That disclosure is not conditional on landline interception first being pleaded as a generic issue. Whether such allegations are otherwise properly pleaded is a separate matter, capable of challenge by strike-out application.

In the Mirror Newspapers Hacking Litigation, the claimants applied at a case management conference to vary two earlier disclosure orders. Those orders provided for early and later disclosure of call data relating to claimants’ and associates’ mobile telephone numbers.

The application followed witness evidence alleging interception of landline calls and access to landline voicemail. MGN opposed the variation because landline interception was not pleaded in the generic particulars of common facts and issues. It contended that paragraph 4 of Mann J’s order of 10 March 2020 prevented individual claimants from pleading that form of unlawful information-gathering unless it first appeared in the generic particulars.

The issue was whether paragraph 4 barred claimant-specific allegations of landline interception and, pending any generic amendment, prevented disclosure relating to landline numbers.

1. Application granted. The earlier disclosure orders should be varied so that their references to mobile telephone numbers include landline telephone numbers, subject to the stated pleading condition.

2. Paragraph 4 of Mann J’s order of 10 March 2020 required current and future claimants to plead by reference to the generic particulars of common facts and issues. Properly construed, it did not limit the kinds of claim that individual claimants could bring. It prevented them from pleading in claimant-specific particulars the same material, or slight variants of it, already pleaded generically. Its purpose was to ensure that MGN had to answer common material only once (paras [17]–[19]).

3. The generic particulars then in force did not plead landline interception or landline voicemail interception. Landline allegations were therefore not part of the generic case. They were nevertheless different material, rather than additional or alternative material going to a matter already pleaded generically. Paragraph 4 did not preclude their inclusion in claimant-specific particulars (paras [10], [18]–[19], [21]).

4. Early disclosure of landline call data furthered good case management and settlement where a claimant’s claim form pleaded unlawful information-gathering extending to landlines. No disproportionality objection to that disclosure had been advanced. A claimant alleging only mobile-phone interception was not entitled under the varied regime to disclosure relating to landline numbers (paras [20], [22]).

5. MGN could contend by an appropriate strike-out application that landline allegations were otherwise improperly advanced. That issue did not arise from the construction of paragraph 4 (para [21]).

not stated in the judgment.

The ruling considered variations to disclosure orders made by Mann J at the ninth case management conference on 9 July 2015 and the tenth case management conference on 16 May 2016, and construed paragraph 4 of Mann J’s order of 10 March 2020.