Addleshaw Goddard
outwitted

On the morning of the Trial I arrived at the Court building at 08.30 and discovered we were scheduled to appear in courtroom 1 at 10.00 so I went to the waiting room and let the clerks know of the Defendant’s arrival. The next to appear was my only witness, Brian.

Soon after I recognised Adam Gould the Barrister for the Claimants, Daniel Thwaites Plc had arrived and we exchanged greetings. A little later Mr Gould came over and introduced Gareth Jones who is a Partner at Addleshaw Goddard who are lawyers representing the Claimant. After exchanging greetings Mr Jones announced that he had brought 3 witnesses to Court despite the fact that I had emailed him on 15 November and explained we would no longer be requiring those 3 witnesses namely, Ann Yerburgh, Caroline Cockshott and Kevin Wood to give evidence on behalf of the Defendant.

This came as a shock to me because it was so unexpected and I was caught completely off guard as I had not prepared any questions for them. I suspect this was deliberately planned by the Claimant’s lawyers to cause confusion on the morning of the trial because they had emailed the Defendant and Court on 27 November 2024 just 2 days before the trial stating Ann Yerburgh would not be attending on the day because of health problems plus Caroline Cockshott and Kevin Wood also would not be attending but would be on “standby” at their offices just in case and would be available at short notice.

From that point on things only got worse for the Defendant because the Trial itself was a complete shambles. This was mainly because at the interim Hearing on the 19 November 2024 the Judge had ruled this was a Fast Track Trial and it was clear he wasn’t best pleased when 8 witnesses turned up at Court on the day, he was also surprised at what happened.

Firstly a lot of time was taken up trying to determine what was going to happen to the Defendant’s 3 original witnesses. This could have been more easily resolved if the Judge had indicated the Trial could have been extended by an extra day but he didn’t and as I had not prepared any questions for the said witnesses I informed the Court they would not be required to give evidence. There was also the decision to be made relating to the Defendant’s other witness, Brian and the Claimant’s Barrister was objecting to his inclusion. I strongly argued that Brian’s evidence was pivotal to the Defendant’s cause but the Judge ruled against the Defendant.

Following that I then raised the point that the Defendant needed to access the Internet firstly because it had been flagged up to the Court on a number of previous occasions in the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Statements of Truth that were referred to at the said Hearing. I also reminded the Judge there were in excess of 130 Default Notices that required the Court’s ruling as to which notices should be removed from the Internet. Again the Claimant’s Barrister objected but ultimately the Judge found against the Claimant. This meant both parties had to swap places in Court to enable me to connect my laptop by cable to the courtroom screen. The Judge kindly helped and after a few technical problems and the appreciative intervention of the Clerk of the Court we successfully connected to the Internet but we only had 1 hour left of the morning session.

It was clear to me the Judge was faced with the problem of fitting a quart into a pint pot there being so little time for questioning witnesses. Looking back at what happened I am truly grateful to the Court for being given the opportunity to produce a written Submission.

TRIAL BUNDLES delivered just 3 days prior to trial

The Claimant’s lawyers were allocated the responsibility of having to create all 3 parties Bundles above for the Trial and that placed them in the unenviable position of owing a duty of care to both of the other participants. So far I haven’t noticed any problems with the Claimant’s first Bundle containing 289 pages but, I have only given it a cursory glance. The same findings apply to the Claimant’s second bundle containing 503 pages.

However, I had serious reservations with Trial Bundle B.pdf and this contained 25 pages within which the first page was the Bundle's Index page, 7 pages are allocated to the Defendant (John Duggan’s First Statement of Truth), 8 pages are allocated to the Claimant (Richard Bailey’s Second Statement of Truth) and a further 5 pages are allocated to the Defendant (John Duggan’s Second Statement of Truth) the remaining 4 pages contained various emails.

The Bundle's Index page as expected was a textual document but John Duggan’s First Statement of Truth which appears in pages 2 – 8 came as a complete surprise because each of the pages were images of text whilst the original Statement of Truth were pages of texts. This meant that when you electronically search these pages say for example the word “tick” it will find 0 results whereas in the original statement it will find 2 results. The final oddity in this Bundle was that one might have expected the remaining pages such as Richard Bailey’s and John Duggan’s Second Statements of Truths together with the various emails would also have been pages of images, but they were textual documents and hence capable of being searched electronically.

On finding these oddities I was perplexed at first but the more I thought about it the more I realised this was created by Addleshaw Goddard and the question then occurred was it an accident or was it deliberate? The answer is it was undoubtedly deliberate and unfortunately for Addleshaw Goddard whose responsibility it was to deliver the Bundles to the Court it must have come as a huge shock to them when the Defendant uncovered their deceptive tactics.

Author: John Duggan - 85 year old Litigant in Person for the Defendant

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