Judgement was handed down in Hemming v Poulton today. Ms Poulton is presenting it as an unqualified success on her fundraising page. In fact Hemming succeeded in having parts of Ms Poulton’s amended Defence struck out. Deputy Master Bard struck out all of Ms Poulton’s Defence of Honest Opinion and parts of her Truth defence, with further amendments likely on both sides and no end in sight. Her harassment counter-claim survives although that is not a high bar in a fact sensitive statutory tort. The hearing also dealt with a counter-counter-claim (in effect) by the 4th Party Darren Laverty. Despite the best efforts of Ms Poulton’s barrister Richard Munden of 5RB, who filed an 18 page Skeleton Argument, unrepresented Laverty got permission to bring a £500,000 (half-million) libel claim against Poulton. Finally, it was also confirmed that Ms Poulton is under police investigation for revealing the names of two underage child abuse victims in a video interview. 

Sonia Poulton has issued an inflammatory and misleading ‘official statement’ on the dispute. Extracted still used for the purpose of criticism and review.

Your author did not participate in the hearing today as he was working, but had it on in the background at times (like the radio!), except when having connection problems. The judgement was only an initial procedural one, but one thing that amused me was that despite Poulton engaging an expensive lawyer to rewrite her pleadings the judge still struck out parts of it. She is also not trying to prove the Truth of Esther Baker’s allegations. Anyone on hashtag #Truth is going to be disappointed.

The judge criticised Sonia’s pleas on meaning.

Judge strikes out the plea of honest opinion in the absence of specification of what that opinion was.

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Sonia Poulton has issued an inflammatory and misleading ‘official statement’ on the dispute. Extracted still used for the purpose of criticism and review.

So, there was a hearing today in Hemming v Poulton. The hearing began with Sonia agreeing to pay me £279 in costs. I then left, and wanted to wait until after the hearing to write about the other matters. Under the Civil Procedure Rules, a large of documents passed into the public domain. The hearing was an application by John Hemming to strike out or summarily judge Sonia Poulton’s pleadings as deficient. Poulton, to some extent, agreed and cross-applied to amend. Defences she still relies upon however, are an allegation she cannot be sure that views on her collaboration with Shaun Attwood were not purchased.

At the outset, I should say that I am a party to these proceedings and so my point of view is naturally selective and focused on my best case. However, since Sonia Poulton has been tweeting all day, a few balancing facts are in order.

Are you donating to Sonia? Did she tell you it is all about Truth? #Truth? Really. Check out this from her defence –

An extract from Sonia Poulton’s defence asking him to prove that the views on her video collaboration with Shaun Attwood are not fake.

If I were a professional journalist I would rather settle than run this as part of my defence. To be clear, Sonia expanded on this in a witness statement that was used in the hearing and therefore became public domain under the collateral use rule –

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Sonia Poulton has issued an inflammatory and misleading ‘official statement’ on the dispute. This morning though, she actually had to pay mine and another man’s modest costs of correcting her pleadings. Extracted still used for the purpose of criticism and review.

At a hearing in the High Court before Deputy Master Bard this morning, Sonia Poulton agreed to pay my costs. Why? John Hemming is suing Sonia Poulton. She has entered a defence, which we thought was deficient. Sonia then counter-claimed alleging John, myself and a third man, “harassed her”. Mostly by criticising her on blogs and suing her. John applied to strike-out. Sonia initially talked to tough, but then applied to amend her pleadings. Unfortunately, they were still deficient and she agreed to remove one of her proposed changes at my request. The rest I agreed (because the court usually allows one chance at fixing poorly drafted pleadings, and because I am confident to defend them).

As a result, Sonia agreed to pay me £219, plus another £60 for my time amending my defence if the court does not strike out or summarily the pleadings on John’s application. Not the best start to her claim. Sonia has commented extensively on social media, so I will be doing an article later setting out some of the true facts of the case for people who might be minded to support her or even donate. Sonia also agreed to pay £225 to the third man.

However, I will be waiting until after the hearing of John’s application as I want to be careful as to what is said in court and what documents are referred to, so check back later or tomorrow. I have limited this post to decided matters. I would add that I have a high opinion of Deputy Master Bard who very kindly and professionally granted me an Order back in the days when you could go see the (Deputy) Masters in practice, whilst I was a law student.