Court orders final prohibitory injunction against persons unknown (Novartis v Stop Huntingdon and ors)

Table of contents

• Practical implications
• Applying the Bloomsbury test

Article summary

Dispute Resolution analysis: the High Court has made final an interim injunction prohibiting persons unknown from carrying out certain threatened acts of violence in respect of Novartis staff and property amounting to harassment of protected persons. Here the unnamed individuals were ‘people who currently intend, or who are likely to embark upon, a course of protest amounting to, at the least, unlawful harassment. They have a common purpose but not a common form and are incapable of being identified or described with any precision.’ Drawing on authorities including the Bloomsbury Publishing case and balancing the potential injustice to the unnamed defendants against the risk to the claimants, the judge made the injunctive relief final.