AA & Ors v Emory Andrew Tate

A stay of civil proceedings pending a criminal investigation or prosecution should be ordered only where it is in the interests of justice and there is a real, not fanciful or theoretical, risk of serious prejudice leading to injustice. The burden lies on the party seeking the stay, and the power must be exercised with great care. The mere possibility that further evidence may emerge, or that a civil judgment may attract publicity, will not ordinarily satisfy that threshold. A court may nevertheless adjourn the application and vacate a trial where outstanding disclosure makes the proposed trial unfair, while preserving liberty to restore the stay application if circumstances materially change.

AA, BB, CC and DD brought civil claims alleging rape, sexual assault, physical assault and coercive or controlling behaviour. Criminal allegations made by AA, BB and CC had previously been investigated, but the police decided to reinvestigate them after disclosure proceedings revealed concerns about the quality and completeness of the earlier investigation.

The defendant applied for a stay of the civil proceedings for at least 12 months pending the reinvestigation and any resulting criminal proceedings. The court considered whether the continuation of the civil claim created a real risk of serious prejudice capable of leading to injustice, and whether the outstanding disclosure justified vacating the imminent trial.

1. The stay application was refused, but adjourned with liberty to restore. The court vacated the trial listed for June 2026.
2. The applicable framework required the court to ask whether a stay was in the interests of justice, recognising that a claimant normally has a right to have the claim processed, heard and decided. The applicant bore the burden of justifying that interference. A stay required a real, rather than notional, risk of serious prejudice which might lead to injustice.
3. The asserted risk that publicity from a civil trial would prejudice a future jury was insufficient. Jurors would be directed to decide the criminal case on the evidence and to put prior knowledge out of their minds. In any event, the intervening Romanian proceedings and other criminal charges meant that any publicity was unlikely to remain foremost in jurors’ minds.
4. The defendant’s right against self-incrimination did not, by itself, establish the necessary prejudice. Although he might decline to answer questions concerning undisclosed criminal terms of reference, that did not prevent him answering questions focused on the civil issues.
5. The possibility that the reinvestigation might uncover new evidence was inherent in any reinvestigation. It did not presently create a real risk of injustice. The application was premature, but could be restored if new evidence could not be disclosed or other circumstances established a real, rather than fanciful, risk.
6. Separate case-management considerations made an immediate trial unfair. Relevant material existed in the police data downloads, the disclosure application had not received a substantive response, and disclosure could not realistically be completed before June 2026. The trial was therefore vacated pending a further case-management hearing.

The judgment describes the commencement of the civil proceedings, the defendant’s application for non-party disclosure under s. 34 of the Senior Courts Act 1981 and CPR 31.17, and the adjournment of that application after the police decided to reinvestigate the allegations. The present court refused to stay the proceedings, adjourned the application with liberty to restore, and vacated the June 2026 trial.