Richard Alan Parsons v Elizabeth Garnett & Ors

On an application for default judgment, the court must determine whether the pleaded claim is in working order and can properly be given effect to on its own terms. It must not conduct a full merits trial, but the exercise is not mechanical. In defamation and harassment claims, the court may consider whether the pleaded meaning, defamatory tendency, serious harm and course of conduct are unreal or fanciful. Serious harm may be pleaded inferentially, including from the gravity and context of anonymous publications. A factual dispute about publication is ordinarily an issue of liability, not jurisdiction, where the defendant is pleaded as a publisher. The court entered judgment where the claims were adequately pleaded and not unreal.

The claimant, a businessman and landowner, brought claims in harassment and libel against tenant farmers and their daughter concerning anonymous poison-pen letters circulated between 2018 and 2020. The defendants did not acknowledge service or file a defence, although they later provided witness statements denying authorship and disputing publication.

The claimant applied for default judgment under Part 12 of the Civil Procedure Rules and sought summary remedies under section 9 of the Defamation Act 1996. The defendants challenged the adequacy of the pleadings and argued that the court should consider their evidence, particularly on publication and serious harm. The central issue was the proper scope of the court’s inquiry on an undefended claim.

1. Default judgment. The basic conditions under CPR 12.3 were satisfied. Under CPR 12.12(1), the court had to give such judgment as the claimant was entitled to on his statement of case. Default judgment was a fully judicial exercise, but not a determination of the full merits. The principal task was to decide whether the claim was in working order and capable of being given effect to on its own terms.
2. The court was required to check that the constituent elements of the torts and the supporting facts were pleaded. In accordance with Sloutsker v Romanova, Charakida v Jackson and Rafique & anor v ACORN Ltd & anor, some consideration of the merits was appropriate where the pleaded case might be extravagant, unreal or incapable of amounting to the relevant tort. The inquiry did not permit a full evaluation of unpleaded evidence or an unfiled defence.
3. The pleaded defamatory meanings were not extravagant, the defamatory tendency was not unreal, and the serious-harm case was adequately particularised. Serious harm could be established inferentially from the gravity and salacious nature of the allegations, the anonymous poison-pen format, the village context and identified onward publication. The limited number of initial publishees did not make the claim unreal.
4. Publication was pleaded against all defendants, including Mr Garnett as a joint publisher. On the pleadings, it was not a jurisdictional issue under section 10(1) of the Defamation Act 2013. It was a factual issue going to liability. The court distinguished the circumstances considered in Pirtek v Jackson. Even on the evidence, the defendants’ denials did not make the pleaded case bizarre or unreal.
5. The harassment allegations described a course of conduct capable of meeting the required criminal-law level of gravity. Judgment was therefore entered against the defendants on the pleaded liability bases. The court indicated damages of £10,000 for libel, £12,000 jointly and severally against Mr and Mrs Garnett for harassment, declarations and injunctions. A mandatory apology would not have been proportionate.