Mueen-Uddin v Secretary of State for the Home Department

The Supreme Court allowed the appeal and set aside the strike-out of the claimant’s libel and GDPR claims. The court held that the strike-out as an abuse of process was wrongly decided: the Hunter doctrine (preventing collateral attacks on convictions) did not apply where the earlier foreign criminal proceedings were one in which the claimant lacked a full and fair opportunity to contest the conviction. The Court of Appeal’s reliance on a multi-factor assessment combining aspects of Hunter and Jameel was unprincipled. The court also rejected the view that evidential difficulty in proving truth after a long interval necessarily makes continuation of defamation proceedings an abuse of process.

Key legal principles:

• Abuse of process: the Hunter principle requires that a claimant previously had a full opportunity to contest the earlier decision; absent that, a collateral challenge is not necessarily abusive.
• Jameel principle and section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013: proceedings may be struck out as an abuse where the claim does not serve the legitimate purpose of protecting reputation, but that enquiry is distinct from Hunter and must not be conflated with a cost/value balancing test.
• Dingle and mitigation: prior publications raising the same allegation are not admissible to whittle down vindicatory damages; foreign convictions are not automatically treated as conclusive evidence of bad reputation.

The claimant, a long-standing British citizen and prominent figure in UK Muslim communal life, brought proceedings for libel and for breach of the GDPR arising from a footnote in a Home Office report published in October 2019 which, by reference to media reports and the conviction of the claimant by a Bangladesh tribunal in absentia, suggested he had been found guilty of crimes against humanity in 1971.

The Secretary of State successfully struck out the claim in the High Court as an abuse of process and the Court of Appeal dismissed the claimant’s appeal. The courts below applied two lines of abuse jurisprudence: (i) the Hunter doctrine against collateral attacks on criminal convictions, and (ii) the Jameel principle that trivial or minimal reputational harm may render defamation proceedings abusive, with the Court of Appeal combining a number of factors to conclude abuse.

The Supreme Court considered (i) whether Hunter abuse applies where the earlier criminal proceedings were foreign and the claimant did not have a full and fair opportunity to contest them; (ii) whether, and in what circumstances, earlier unremedied publications or a foreign conviction can be treated as diminishing the value of the claim; and (iii) whether evidential difficulty faced by a defendant in proving truth long after events is a sufficient basis for striking out for abuse.

The court held that Hunter does not apply where the claimant lacked a full opportunity to contest the foreign proceedings; that Dingle continues to exclude use of prior publications to mitigate damages and that the weight to be given to a foreign conviction depends on its fairness and reception; and that mere evidential difficulty or the passage of time does not make continuation manifestly unfair. The Court concluded the strike-out was wrong and remitted the matter for trial. The court emphasised that the Hunter and Jameel doctrines protect different public interests and must not be conflated.

Relief sought: damages for libel and compensation under the GDPR; the appeal sought to overturn the Court of Appeal’s dismissal and restore the claimant’s right to trial.

Issues framed by the court: whether continuation of the proceedings was an abuse of process under Hunter or Jameel; the relevance of prior publications and a foreign conviction to the value of a libel claim; and whether practical evidential difficulties justified striking out.

Concise reasoning: the claimant did not have a full opportunity to contest the ICT conviction, so Hunter abuse did not apply; Jameel abuse requires that the claim fail the minimal-seriousness requirement and be incompatible with article 10 protections and must not be applied by balancing litigation cost against claimant value; Dingle remains good law on mitigation and foreign convictions are not automatically conclusive; therefore the strike-out was unjustified and the claim should proceed to trial.

The appeal is allowed. The Supreme Court concluded that the strike-out for abuse of process was unsound: Hunter abuse does not apply where the claimant lacked a full and fair opportunity to contest the foreign conviction, the Court of Appeal erred in combining and treating aspects of Hunter and Jameel as a single multi-factorial abuse test, and evidential difficulties or delay do not of themselves justify striking out. The claimant’s proceedings may therefore proceed to trial.

Appeal from the Court of Appeal [2022] EWCA Civ 1073 (Dame Victoria Sharp PQBD and Dingemans LJ concurring, Phillips LJ dissenting), which had dismissed the claimant’s appeal against the strike-out by the High Court (Sir Andrew Nicol, sitting as a High Court judge) [2021] EWHC 3026 (QB). The Supreme Court allowed the appeal and set aside the strike-out order.