Cynthia Niruka Tooley v Associated Newspapers Ltd & Anor

The court may grant relief from sanctions to a litigant in person where the breach was significant but inadvertent and the interests of justice favour relief. Litigants in person remain subject to the ordinary procedural rules, although their status may affect the assessment at the margin.

Disapplication of the one-year limitation period for defamation and malicious falsehood is exceptional. The claimant bears the burden of providing a clear, adequate and satisfactory explanation for delay. The shortness of the delay and absence of evidential prejudice will not ordinarily outweigh the importance of the limitation defence.

An interim injunction restraining defamatory publication requires the claim to be bound to succeed. Norwich Pharmacal disclosure of a journalistic source requires arguable wrongdoing and a necessary and proportionate justification overriding source protection.

The claimant brought defamation and malicious falsehood claims against Associated Newspapers Ltd concerning three Daily Mail articles and against Telegraph Media Group Ltd concerning a Telegraph article. She applied for relief from sanctions and reinstatement of the stayed Telegraph claim, disapplication of the limitation period in the first Associated Newspapers claim, interim injunctions, and Norwich Pharmacal relief concerning the source of information used in a further Daily Mail article.

The first Associated Newspapers claim was issued shortly after the one-year limitation period for the first article had expired. The stayed Telegraph claim had not been served because the claimant failed to apply to lift the stay by the date specified in the order. The central issues were whether relief from sanctions and limitation relief should be granted, whether publication should be restrained before trial, and whether disclosure of journalistic sources was justified.

1. Relief from sanctions. The failure to apply to lift the stay of the Telegraph claim was significant and consequential, because the order provided for automatic strike-out. The claimant’s explanation, however, was consistent and convincing: she had made an inadvertent administrative error while dealing with two materially identical orders sealed weeks apart. Applying the Denton principles, her status as a litigant in person affected the assessment only at the margin. The recent ADHD diagnosis was given little weight and was not decisive. In all the circumstances, relief from sanctions was granted, the claim reinstated and the stay lifted.
2. Limitation. The first Associated Newspapers claim concerned only the first article because CPR 16.2(1) and Practice Direction 53B required the publication sued upon to be identified in the claim form. Section 32A of the Limitation Act 1980 was not disapplied. The claimant knew the relevant facts from the outset, and her explanations based on housing instability, mental strain, loss of electronic devices, pre-action correspondence and loss of solicitors did not adequately explain the delay. The delay was only several days, but time is of the essence in defamation and malicious falsehood claims. The absence of demonstrated evidential prejudice was important but far from decisive. The claim was dismissed.
3. Interim injunctions. The applications were refused under the rule in Bonnard v Perryman. The Telegraph article was not unarguably defamatory, and the defendants had identified arguable truth defences under section 2 of the Defamation Act 2013. No injunction should be granted in a claim being dismissed on limitation grounds. The potential operation of the single publication rule under section 8 of the Defamation Act 2013 also supplied an arguable limitation defence. The claimant’s lengthy delay was an additional material factor under section 12(3) of the Human Rights Act 1998.
4. Norwich Pharmacal relief. The claimant failed to show an arguable wrong by the unidentified source. The relevant Daily Mail article was substantially a report of apparently public county court proceedings, and the asserted similarity between wording in the article and a later solicitors’ letter did not establish a proper basis for wrongdoing. Even if arguable wrongdoing had been shown, disclosure was not necessary and proportionate. The interests of justice in pursuing civil or regulatory proceedings did not justify overriding the strong protection accorded to journalistic sources.