Various Claimants v News Group Newspapers Ltd

A final cut-off date for joining managed multiple-claim litigation should not be imposed where substantial numbers of potential claimants may not yet know that they have actionable claims. Publicity about wrongdoing, an article about a person, or suspicious telephone activity does not necessarily provide sufficient knowledge, particularly where the alleged conduct was covert and evidence of it is held by the defendant or a third party.

The court must assess whether the proposed cut-off would further the overriding objective in practice. If later claimants would have to bring complex generic and claimant-specific issues individually, the order may increase costs and court resources rather than save them. A future cut-off may nevertheless become appropriate if the flow of new claims materially declines or potential claimants have long known of their claims.

The defendant applied for an order that claims issued or served after 29 July 2022 would fall outside the managed phone-hacking litigation scheme, known as MTVIL. The scheme had dealt with approximately 1,030 claims and had developed generic pleadings, disclosure and case-management arrangements concerning alleged unlawful information-gathering and concealment.

The defendant argued that a final deadline would incentivise remaining claimants to issue promptly, provide certainty about its potential exposure, reduce costs and conserve court resources. The claimants contended that many victims could not know that they had claims without disclosure of phone data or private-investigator records, and that late individual claims would be more expensive and resource-intensive. The central issue was whether substantially all potential claimants knew enough to bring claims before the proposed deadline.

1. Application dismissed. On the evidence before the court, no final cut-off date for claims entering MTVIL should be imposed in 2022.
2. The defendant’s case depended on the premise that substantially any potential claimant with a claim must already know enough to bring it before the proposed deadline. That premise was not established. There was a continuing flow of claims, many arising when associates became involved in existing claims or were identified through disclosure.
3. Knowledge of phone-hacking publicity did not equate to knowledge that a particular person had been unlawfully targeted. An article about a claimant did not necessarily reveal unlawful information-gathering, because the source of information could be disguised. A claim could also arise without any article about the claimant. The court relied on the reasoning in Various Claimants v NGN Limited (No.2) [2013] EWHC 2119 and the findings in Gulati v MGN Limited [2015] EWHC 1482 (Ch) as materially illustrating those difficulties.
4. The generic pleadings and disclosure in MTVIL were important to establishing unlawful activity, responding to limitation arguments and assessing damages. Closing the scheme could therefore lead to numerous standalone claims requiring separate pleading, disclosure and case management, defeating the defendant’s claimed savings.
5. The decisions in Pearce v Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change [2015] EWHC 3775 QB and Weaver v British Airways [2021] EWHC 217 QB recognised the case-management value of cut-off dates, but did not justify the order sought here. In Weaver, in particular, the defendant had notified potential claimants of their possible claims, unlike the position alleged here.
6. The decision did not preclude a later application. A cut-off might become appropriate if new claims significantly tailed off, or if new claimants mainly had long-standing knowledge of their claims. Disclosure or notification identifying potential claimants might also materially alter the position.