The court “lacks jurisdiction” to protect the party’s lawyers from abuse

Hill:

The Supreme Court does not have the authority to grant plaintiffs a protective order that stops a defendant from harassing his lawyers, a judge has ruled.

Mrs Justice Hill said that if city-owned company Quinn Emanuel wanted an injunction, it would have to apply for one itself.

It is acting for Titan Wealth Holdings, an associated company and two senior employees in a claim for breach of trust, breach of contract and harassment against former employee Marian Atinuke Okunola.

Earlier this year, the High Court granted the plaintiffs an interim injunction restraining Ms. Okunola from harassing the employees and restraining her from disseminating and passing on confidential information.

In June, Mr Chamberlain held her in contempt for numerous breaches of the order and imposed a six-month prison sentence, suspended subject to compliance with the order.

The plaintiffs applied to activate the sentence in part because Ms. Okunola had attempted to continue harassing the employees by attacking Quinn Emanuel.

Separately, they sought this protective order to ban her from publishing offensive communications to or about the attorneys and from using “blasphemous or otherwise grossly offensive language or images” in communications sent or copied to them.

The draft order expressly excluded all court documents and included a criminal notice.

Hill J accepted that Ms Okunola had subjected the lawyers “to communications that are repetitive, sometimes meaningless, and containing needlessly distressing and derogatory content”.

She continued: “The correspondence contained threatening and/or sexually offensive content directed at the third and fourth claimants, their lawyers and others associated with them, such as (partner Yasseen) Gailani’s mother.

“The style of some emails (in bold capital letters, large text and with repeated exclamation points) has increased their threatening nature.”

After Mr Gailani said he would complain to the police about the emails, she filed a police complaint against him, alleging he had lied, perverted the course of justice and was guilty of harassment of witnesses.

The judge continued: “The communications were disturbing to the plaintiffs’ legal team. It was necessary for the plaintiffs’ law firm to devote time and resources to ensuring the protection of their personnel…

“During the trial, the suspect behaved in a similar manner. For example, shortly after I stood up before the court staff on October 9, 2024, the defendant repeatedly shouted ‘scum’ at junior counsel and the rest of the plaintiffs’ legal team, ending her outburst with ‘order that’.”

The judge also accepted that her conduct now negatively affected the lawyers’ ability to discharge their duties to their clients, and negatively affected the claimants’ ability to conduct the proceedings.

“Based on the evidence before me, the individual attorneys who received the defendant’s communications, particularly Mr. Gailani, would have a credible claim of harassment against the defendant.”

The problem with the application was that there was no cause of action between the claimants and the defendant. It was about her behavior towards the lawyers, who at this time had no intention of applying for an injunction themselves.

There was a “lack of authority” on this point and Hill J said she was not satisfied that the court had “a sound jurisdictional basis for making the order sought”.

If the lawyers wanted to restrain Ms. Okunola, they should do it themselves, she said.

However, Hill J granted leave to appeal, given the “novel” nature of the application.

She made no order for costs, saying that Ms Okunola’s “shocking conduct in sending the correspondence” – for which she was “completely unapologetic… claiming that the plaintiffs’ lawyers ‘deserved’ to be treated by her as they had been ” – meant the right to deviate from the normal order in which she receives her costs.

The claimants did not recover their costs as they could have done and their conduct in making the claim was reasonable, she continued.

“I have great sympathy for the position their lawyers find themselves in… Moreover, the application was based on an untested and new area of ​​law. This also makes the plaintiffs’ behavior reasonable.”