Site icon Inside Croydon

Council withdraws High Court case against Inside Croydon

insidecroydon

Hailing a ‘victory for commonsense’ over legal threats against him, this website’s editor promises to continue reporting on matters surrounding the Penn Report and Croydon’s bungling efforts to bring those responsible for the borough’s bankruptcy to account

A week after lawyers hired by cash-strapped Croydon Council were told by a High Court judge that they were “trying to put the genie back in the bottle”, they today dropped the case brought against Inside Croydon for publishing documents that had already been published on the council website. But not before their ill-considered action cost the Council Tax-payers of Croydon an estimated £20,000.

The outcome will be seen by media lawyers and publishers as an important victory for the freedom of the press. “Legal confidentiality is like your virginity,” according to one observer. “Once you’ve given it away, you can’t get it back.”

Croydon Council is described in the latest edition of Private Eye magazine as “a national laughing stock”, with senior officials – such as chief executive Katherine Kerswell and her appointee as the borough’s legal director, Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense, who brought thecase against Inside Croydon – as doing “their utmost to look ridiculous”.

Jason Perry, the borough’s £81,000 per year elected Mayor, might have intervened to stop the nonsense, yet chose not to.

A Consent Order was agreed today which allows Inside Croydon to keep published on its site its reports from earlier this month, based on the legal advice received by the council earlier this year in respect of its options for action against Jo Negrini, the former council CEO, and other senior figures at Fisher’s Folly who helped to bankrupt the borough in 2020.

The articles which caused Croydon Council such discomfort are:

Inside Croydon may repeat extracts from the advice documents that it has already reported in its future reporting.

High costs: Stephen Lawrence-Orumwense

There remains, as specifically determined by Mr Justice Nicklin last week, no third-party injunction on the material.

Steven Downes, the Editor of Inside Croydon, has given a permanent undertaking to not publish anything further from the documents.

It was Downes who suggested to council officials making his original undertaking to the court a permanent one – thus avoiding a further session at the High Court on November 28.

Legal experts estimate that Downes’ gesture, as well as offering Lawrence-Orumwense an escape hatch from suffering further ridicule, may well have saved Croydon tax-payers another £10,000 in legal fees.

Importantly, under the Consent Order, there was no award of costs against Downes or Inside Croydon. The council will therefore have to pay its own legal bills, estimated to have run to £20,000 to bring the case at the High Court. Even including a court fee to submit the consent order.

The undertaking given by Inside Croydon should not be trivialised in any way. In big, bold capital letters in red ink on the temporary order issued by Judge Nicklin last week was a very serious “Penal notice”.

This stated: “If you the respondent, Steven Downes, breach your undertaking to the court… you may be held to be in contempt of court and imprisoned or fined, or your assets may be seized.”

This afternoon, Downes said, “Basically, not to over-emphasise this at all, our family home was on the line over this case.

Laughing stock: how Private Eye magazine reported on the case this week

“I was very happy to make the undertaking permanent, because after last week’s hearing in the High Court, I saw no purpose in wasting more of the court’s time, my time or tax-payers money on Croydon Council’s absurd action.

“We have already published everything that we were going to publish from the two documents that the council had itself put into the public domain on its website for six weeks. I am happy to give an undertaking to not do something I was never going to do in any case.”

According to Downes, he had offered the olive branch to Lawrence-Orumwense last Friday, when he had handed over a signed copy of the then-temporary undertaking at Fisher’s Folly.

Since Monday of this week, Inside Croydon has been assisted by barrister David Mitchell, of 39Essex Chambers. Concerned by the freedom of speech aspects of the case, Mitchell has acted on a pro bono basis.

The offer to make the undertaking permanent was made formally on Tuesday.

But it was not until Wednesday evening that Lawrence-Orumwense accepted. Since then, the council’s lawyers have been drawing up a succession of draft orders, some that included undertakings that had never been given in court last week, until a final draft was received, agreed and lodged with the court earlier this evening.

Bystander: Mayor Jason Perry stood by and did nothing over the council’s waste-of-money legal case

Downes has now permanently suspended a crowdfunder – the #KerswellBall Fund – which he launched earlier in the week while the council’s threat of action was still a live possibility, including the risk that Inside Croydon might be ordered to pay the local authority’s costs.

In the first 24 hours, readers and supporters of Inside Croydon had donated more than £2,000 to the legal fighting fund.

“Inside Croydon is really fortunate to have so many generous readers and supporters. Their backing this past week and their donations have been really appreciated, they really meant a great deal,” Downes said.

“Mayor Perry could have stopped this nonsense at any time in the last eight days. But he chose not to. So Perry’s cash-strapped council has now spent a hefty five-figure sum on a legal case that should never have been brought in the first place, and which has just made Croydon Council look even more ridiculous.

“At least one good thing has come out of it all: the unused legal fighting fund will be divided between two outstanding Croydon homelessness charities – Croydon Nightwatch and the South Norwood Community Kitchen.

“They’ll be getting £1,000 each just before Christmas, at a time when Mayor Perry is cutting council support to voluntary groups like them across the borough.”


Exit mobile version