Titan Wealth Holdings Limited & Ors v Marian Atinuke Okunola

An injunction requires a cause of action entitling the applicant to substantive relief. A party cannot ordinarily obtain an injunction, ostensibly for case-management purposes, to restrain conduct directed at other persons who have brought no claim and do not intend to do so. The court’s inherent jurisdiction and general case-management powers do not provide a sound basis for circumventing that requirement. Specific exceptions protecting the efficacy of existing orders do not extend to such an application. The court may take grossly offensive communications into account when exercising its costs discretion; the right to freedom of expression does not prevent that. Where the application raises a genuinely novel issue and authority is sparse, that may provide a compelling reason for permission to appeal.

The claimants applied during a trial for a protective injunction regulating the defendant’s communications with the claimants’ lawyers. The proposed order prohibited abusive, demeaning, insulting or grossly offensive communications, subject to an exception for documents formally filed in legal proceedings.

The defendant was a former employee and had sent repetitive, threatening and sexually abusive communications to members of the claimants’ legal team. The claimants relied on the effect of that conduct on the conduct and costs of the litigation. The central issue was whether the claimants could obtain an injunction for the protection of their lawyers, despite the lawyers bringing no claim and presently intending to bring none.

1. Application dismissed. The proposed order was an injunction in substance and form, notwithstanding the claimants’ submission that it was merely a case-management order.
2. An injunction is subject to the overriding cause-of-action requirement: the applicant must have a cause of action entitling it to substantive relief. The individual lawyers, particularly Mr Gailani, might have had a credible harassment claim under Protection From Harassment Act 1997, s.1(1), but they had brought no claim or application and did not presently intend to do so.
3. The claimants’ characterisation of the application as one intended to protect the proper conduct of their proceedings was rejected. In substance, it sought to restrain harassment of the lawyers, brought by their clients and for their lawyers’ benefit. That made it impossible to assess the serious-question-to-be-tried requirement and difficult to assess the likely-success requirement under Human Rights Act 1998, s.12(3), because no trial by the lawyers was anticipated.
4. The recognised exceptions to the cause-of-action rule did not assist. Quia timet relief does not permit one person to apply on behalf of another absent an intended cause of action. Search orders, anti-suit injunctions and injunctions protecting the efficacy of existing court orders arise in materially different circumstances. Maclain Watson & Co. Ltd v International Tin Council (No. 2) and In re Oriental Credit Ltd concerned existing proceedings and orders between parties already before the court.
5. The court therefore lacked a sound jurisdictional basis for the injunction. The lawyers would need to make their own application if they wished to restrain the communications.
6. There was no order as to costs. Although the claimants were unsuccessful, the defendant’s shocking conduct had generated the application, the claimants had acted reasonably, and the issue was novel and unsupported by directly applicable authority. Her Article 10 rights did not prevent the court from considering the communications in exercising its costs discretion.
7. Permission to appeal was granted under Civil Procedure Rules 1998, r.52.6(1)(b), because the injunction was novel and the dearth of directly relevant authority provided a compelling reason for an appeal.

First-instance decision. The judgment records earlier procedural orders, including an interim injunction granted on 5 April 2024 and continued on 23 May 2024, and a contempt finding on 21 June 2024. No lower-court appellate decision is stated.