The High Court has ruled that a judge was right to ban a litigant from speaking to or approaching an opposing solicitor after confronting him with abuse and threats.

His Honour Judge Dodds had ordered that John Ellison should not abuse, harass, assault, threaten, approach or be within 10 yards of solicitor Jeremy Tennyson after an altercation in September 2021.

The court heard that Tennyson, a partner with Cumbria firm Hart Jackson who represented the claimants in a right of way dispute, had sought to visit his clients’ home and came across Ellison, one of the defendants to the claim. A verbal exchange followed which Tennyson said left him ‘intimated and scared’ and unable to see his client.

Dodds had found, based on CCTV evidence, that Ellison had asked who Tennyson was as the solicitor attempted to walk past to his clients’ home. Tennyson responded ‘and you are?’ as part of the exchange, to which Ellison said: ‘Mind your own fucking business, you little twat,’ and shortly thereafter, ‘I could kill you now’.

Ellison admitted saying these words but submitted that the ‘I could kill you’ was said to himself and was not intended to be heard by Tennyson.

Dodds said there was no doubt, in his judgment, that the claimants were entitled to have their legal advisers come to their property and therefore go across the defendant’s land on the right of way without the fear of harassment, threats or assault.

The judge said the court should intervene to prevent ‘vexatious, oppressive or unconscionable conduct in litigation and the protection of the court’s own processes’.

The injunction was appealed on the basis that the judge erred in law and was wrong to grant an interim injunction relating to individuals not party to proceedings.

The appellants said the protections sought and provided for in the order did not arise between the parties to the litigation and were not ordered pursuant to any relevant pleaded cause of action. The matter, it was argued, should be left to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service given that Tennyson had reported the verbal exchange. It was further argued that the injunction was unduly restrictive on Ellison.

Mr Justice Sweeting, sitting in Linemile Properties Ltd & Anor v Plater & Anor, said the judge had not erred in law and had taken care to limit the relief to what was necessary. He added: ‘As the judge found, the words and actions of Mr Ellison were threatening and could not be shrugged off as a normal reaction or a turn of phrase in common use. It would be an extraordinary way to behave if Mr Ellison had simply been encountering a member of the public not connected to the litigation.’