Alex Kenneth Snowball v Chief Constable of Thames Valley & Ors

On strike-out and summary-judgment applications, the court must identify claims that are bound to fail while avoiding a mini-trial. A deficient pleading may be amended where the underlying claim is not necessarily hopeless and can be answered proportionately.

Abuse of process requires a two-stage inquiry: whether the conduct is abusive and, if so, whether strike-out should follow after considering proportionality. Harassment is assessed by reference to the course of conduct as a whole, objectively and in context. Claims must identify material facts supporting each cause of action. A claimant cannot recover personally for company losses or relitigate matters finally determined elsewhere.

The claimant brought a claim exceeding £22 million against nine public bodies, alleging a prolonged campaign of harassment and numerous causes of action, including negligence, assault, false imprisonment, harassment, malicious prosecution, misfeasance, conspiracy, property torts, human-rights breaches and data-protection breaches.

The defendants applied for strike-out and/or summary judgment under the Civil Procedure Rules 1998. The court considered whether the pleadings disclosed recognisable causes of action, whether particular claims were abusive or duplicative, whether earlier proceedings barred relitigation, and whether the claimant had standing to pursue losses suffered by companies.

1. General approach. Under CPR 3.4(2) and CPR 24.2, the court may strike out claims disclosing no reasonable grounds, constituting an abuse, or having no real prospect of success. The court must not conduct a mini-trial. A claim should be struck out only where it is bound to fail. Strike-out is a sanction of last resort.
2. Abuse of process. The court applied the two-stage approach in Asturion Foundation v Alibrahim [2020] EWCA Civ 32: first determine whether the conduct is abusive, then exercise discretion whether strike-out is proportionate. The court also applied res judicata, cause-of-action estoppel, issue estoppel and the rule in Henderson v Henderson (1843) 3 Hare 100. Claims seeking to reopen matters finally determined, or matters which should have been raised earlier, were struck out.
3. Police failures and harassment. The pleaded claims based solely on failure by the police to investigate or prevent crime were struck out because English law recognises no general private-law duty to do so. The harassment claim against TVP was allowed to proceed subject to substantial amendment. The relevant question was whether the alleged course of conduct, viewed objectively and in context, was oppressive and unacceptable, rather than whether each individual act was independently harassing. The court relied on the framework in Dowson v Chief Constable of Northumbria [2010] EWHC 2612 (QB).
4. Other torts. The assault and false-imprisonment allegations were inadequately pleaded but were not necessarily bound to fail and therefore were not struck out immediately. Misfeasance required clear pleading of public office, exercise of public functions, targeted or untargeted malice, and foreseeable damage; the claim required further amendment. Malfeasance, as pleaded, was struck out as unrecognised and unparticularised. Intentional infliction of emotional distress failed because no recognised psychiatric injury was pleaded. Negligent emotional distress lacked a recognised legal basis on the pleaded facts.
5. Statutory and regulatory claims. The claims under the Equality Act 2010 and Human Rights Act 1998 were incoherent and out of time. The claims concerning fire-safety prohibition notices were struck out. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applied to the premises, the claimant was a responsible person, challenges to notices had to be brought through the statutory appeal route, and article 39(1) conferred no civil right of action.
6. Company losses and final orders. Claims concerning company property, company liabilities and investment losses were struck out because the claimant lacked standing and the reflective-loss rule applied. The claim against BIDCO was abusive because substantially the same matters had already been litigated. The judgment therefore resulted in extensive strike-out, with remaining matters to be addressed through consequential directions and a substantially shorter amended pleading.

This was a first-instance decision on applications for strike-out and summary judgment. The judgment records several earlier proceedings, including:

• Administrative Court: proceedings concerning the public-spaces fixed penalty were remitted to the Magistrates’ Court with a direction to convict.
• Administrative Court: the appeal concerning the HSE proceedings was struck out on 20 November 2020.
• High Court: claim QB-2021-001041 was struck out on 9 February 2022.
• Huddersfield County Court: claim KOOHD611 was dismissed on 4 July 2024; an appeal was said to be pending.