I used to work in civil litigation many moons ago, and one of the hardest jobs was explaining to clients that there is a duty to disclose matters both helpful and harmful to their cases. Clients are aggrieved that their solicitor "wants" to hand over incriminating documents to the other side. (Remember the fuss at the recent "Wagatha Christie" trial about a mobile phone supposedly having been dropped in the sea - a rather pathetic attempt to conceal disclosable evidence.)
It is also the professional duty of solicitors to seek the evidence to support a client’s case and not to manufacture it. What bent Labour Sandwell Council (SMBC) legal team did in the McNally case is truly astonishing.
It’s not rocket science. The Client asserts facts and the solicitor gathers witness statements and documents to support that case.
And it's not a question of whether or not the solicitor believes his/her Client (although the lawyer cannot put before the Court evidence s/he knows to be false), but a question of proving the case. The rules of professional conduct are strict - false evidence must not be manufactured and put before a Court. But four Solicitors at Sandwell - Tour, Price, Lynch and Maher-Smith (TPLM) and Mcnally caused and/or permitted false and manufactured evidence to be put before the Court. We saw in Part 2 the absurd - false - statements of McNally herself. Now we will take a look at the "supporting evidence" - such as it was.(By the way, despite SMBC’s absolutely flagrant disregard for the Freedom of Information Act and provisions for subject data access, Lynch has, unbelievably moved on and is now employed at the Office of the Information Commissioner! You couldn't make it up.)
We have seen that Surjit Tour, David Stevens, McNally and Cllr Maria Crompton unlawfully conspired to use public funds to let McNally sue me in respect of issues arising from her PERSONAL twitter feed. Solicitors Price, Lynch and Maher-Smith gleefully joined in, seemingly thinking this was their best opportunity to date to finish me off and bankrupt me in the process. These malicious people went further - trying to get an injunction with penal notice attached to keep me away from Oldbury Council House at risk of imprisonment.
In Part One we saw how vicious Lynch was during the farcical protocol process. In Part Two we saw the lies of McNally herself, which Lynch seemingly allowed her to put before the Court with no interference whatsoever. Just by way of one example, McNally was saying to the Court how she feared meeting me “again” when she had never met me at all. I flagged this up to Lynch very early on, but she still allowed McNally to put this blatant lie before the Court (and this was a big lie in the context of the attempt to get an injunction preventing me going anywhere near McNally).
In Parts One and Two I mentioned the infamous email of 4th January, 2021. I am a journalist and was trying to write about McNally at the time. As there were two Lisa McNally’s with medical backgrounds, I quite properly needed to check that I was writing about the right one and so I emailed McNally asking about her qualifications.
In the High Court proceedings McNally tried to persuade the Court that I was somehow stalking her Twitter account etc. and watching her every move, waiting to “attack” her. Not only was this untrue as I stated clearly in my own evidence but the situation was, in fact reversed - she was obsessively watching my output (although she claimed to the Court she was not).
McNally regularly placed her work email address on her private Twitter account - frequently exhorting her claque of local pet journalists to contact her.
In the protocol process McNally claimed that I had never contacted her about her qualifications but I immediately pointed out to Lynch that I had. I sensed a cover-up coming and when Lynch dropped the equally infamous 529-page bundle on me, I immediately looked for the email (as above, Lynch had a professional duty, and a duty under court rules, to disclose this in the bundle). And, of course, it was missing. (See further below.)
McNally offered three "supporting" witness statements when she issued her malicious action. The first two were, bizarrely, from SMBC Union reps. They were so patently prejudicial they were ignored for the purposes of the ongoing proceedings.
The third statement was from SMBC’s now disgraced Chief Executive, David Stevens. There is some relevant history here. Stevens had given live evidence in three Information Tribunals hearings (see elsewhere) and gave an absurdly mannered performance. But it worked in these lowly courts and the two judges involved were effusive in their praise of him - “oh, thank you Mr Stevens”, “oh yes, you have made that very clear for us Mr Stevens” etc. This seemingly caused Stevens to believe that he could put one over on the High Court and he put forward an astonishing statement packed with lies. (I am writing separately about this elsewhere but suffice to say here that I have written to this scumbag offering him the chance to repeat his lies publicly so that I can take appropriate action.)
Stevens even lied that I was “photographing a woman” in an Oldbury pub in December, 2014 (nearly 8 years ago). This was a malicious and vicious falsehood by Twitter trolls and I reported the matter to West Midlands Police (WMP) at the time. Stevens knew this was a lie (as did TPLM) but it was placed in the statement in a crude attempt to smear me. In any event, the non-existent event was supposed to have taken place several YEARS before McNally even joined SMBC. Happily High Court judges are usually extremely clever people and saw straight through Steven’s statement like a pane of glass so that it too was consigned to the bin.
It is noteworthy that, as stated elsewhere, it was not just my brilliant legal team who were horrified at the prejudicial content of Lynch and McNally's malicious 529-page bundle since when I was trying to get legal representation it was also viewed by one of the country's top solicitors in this field. He too was shocked that such an awful case could be put before London's famous Media & Communications Court and he immediately stated that an application would need to be made to strike out scores, or even, hundreds of pages of very obviously irrelevant but prejudicial material.
I wasn’t a very good Solicitor but I spent the majority of my time working on personal injury cases and so I had considerable experience in that field. Again, it is not rocket science but where injury is claimed the Court needs some proof of this and so an INDEPENDENT medical report is obtained. It is NOT the job of the medical expert to comment on the case and liability issues, but to stick to medical matters.
We saw in Part 2 the lies of McNally with regard to the supposed effects of my writing on her - the twitching eye (unseen on loads of videos etc.), the alleged weight loss at the same time that she was complaining in Twitter of weight gain, and the claim of general tiredness and physical malaise when she was constantly boasting of her athletic prowess and even claimed on Twitter that some indicators of her fitness “were the best ever”. McNally did, however, have a self-described extensive history of mental health issues.
Lynch had not even bothered to refer to medical evidence in the protocol letter but this had become particularly important since, as we have seen, whilst there was not a claim for damages for all this in the original letter, greedy McNally then decided she was not just going to screw the taxpayer for her unlawfully-funded costs but she was also also going to grab £10,000 damages for herself.
Stevens, Tour, Lynch and Crompton (and possibly others) decided to "find" the "independent medical evidence " in house and so STEVENS (not, incredibly, the legal team) instructed Sandwell’s own Consultant Occupational Physician, Dr Shiyas Basheer, a close colleague of Lisa McNally, to prepare a report (after the protocol process had started) i.e. someone who is not independent at all.
It is not known how Dr Basheer is paid by SMBC but he also runs an occupational health company in Manchester.
The now disgraced liar, Stevens, wrote to his colleague, Basheer, who recorded this in the very first paragraph of what purported to be an independent medical report:
“I note from your referral letter that you have concerns [regarding McNally] in view of the stress and anxiety she has experienced, recently as a result of a blogger who has written blogs which were highly critical of Dr McNally.”
Basheer’s total bias became even more laughably obvious when he claimed to have read a single blog post and stated: “it appears to be derogatory, defamatory and a personal and scathing attack on Dr McNally.”
How TPLM could put this pathetic effort before the High Court is truly incredible. Basheer conducted his “independent” consultation via telephone. McNally told him some of the same lies she put in her own statement (see above and in Part 2).
After his attacks on the blog the "independent medical expert" opined, that all McNally’s self-described (but fictitious symptoms - and she she forgot to mention the "twitching eye" to him at all), had been “purely” triggered by this blog.
SMBC have not (yet) said how much they paid Basheer for this heap of ordure or whether he did it as a freebie for a mate (in which case TPLM did not inform the Court of this). In any event, this was a pathetic attempt at stitching-up the High Court which was never going to work.
A new issue arises. Basheer recommended to Stevens that he refer McNally for "counselling" via MOHS Workplace Health in West Bromwich. It has now been suggested to me that Basheer is, in fact, on a retainer to MOHS and provides them with consultancy services for which he is paid handsomely. I have been unable to establish (yet) whether this is true but neither Basheer nor MOHS have seen fit to reply to emails I sent them regarding this. Any information on this would be very helpful dear readers? And is this chap Dr Basheer?
Further the lawyers, having constructed the story that the email was in “spam”, still failed to disclose it with either their first of second bundles (in addition to the first 529-page bundle, Lynch served a further 148-page bundle prior to the hearing). Clearly, according to Dave Smith, it was still in existence. TPLM claimed to have found it but STILL did not disclose it!
In any event, this was more manufacturing of evidence since, at the material time, there was an ongoing complaint about McNally in January, 2021 and I wrote to Stevens again in January, 2021 (before the protocol process began) specifically referring to the lack of response to the 4th January, 2021 email so that the conspirators were fully aware of the email long before Lynch served the 529-page bundle without it. I say this was a blatant and deliberate cover-up by TPLM.
Even during the protocol process I was deeply concerned about the conduct of Lynch and wrote to her:
Email JPS to Julia Lynch - 13th February 2021, 7:04 p.m. Paragraph 11:
"Your protocol letter – particularly the annex is bordering on professional misconduct. You have a duty, as a Solicitor, to present the case fairly – especially if you are going to rush to the court to try and fetter the freedom of the press for publishing things that are true. If you go down that route you must present to the Court the full blogs and not your carefully selected extracts."
Perhaps the most extraordinary part of the case, from the legal point of view, was that the Protocol Letter named Alison Knight and Surjit Tour as “prospective claimants”. Yet when the proceedings started they were omitted as Claimant’s although Stevens used his statement to try and smear me with allegations about my conduct towards this pair! Unsurprisingly, TPLM directly condoned this.
I have written about the useless Knight extensively in the blog. She was an employee of SMBC involved in a disastrous project. She left but, incredibly, was later re-employed. Within a very short period of time she produced an absolutely appalling Cabinet Report in respect of Labour's bent property development plan at Lion Farm Fields and followed this up with a monumentally disastrous personal performance at a public Council meeting on the same subject. It transpired (via MY Freedom of Information Act request) that she did little or no work on the Cabinet Report herself and SMBC were forced to admit that she obtained all her information from, er, the property developer! She did not last long at Sandwell and in a management restructure failed in re-applying for her restructured post. (She can console herself with the highly-paid, though short-term, jobs she has secured in local government since - see picture below re her short but remunerative stint at Croydon Council.)
Everything I wrote about the hapless and hopeless Knight was absolutely true and yet she was being presented as a potential claimant in addition to McNally. I duly asked Lynch if SMBC actually had instructions from Knight to act for her and had sent out Client care letters etc. I do not personally believe that Knight had provided instructions and that the conspirators were just using her story to try to smear me. It is noteworthy that even when proceedings were issued, and Lynch served extensive court bundles, there was no witness statement from Knight herself. As above - TPLM still tried, unbelievably, to get her alleged "evidence" into Court as hearsay via Stevens. Seemingly this malevolent piece of work condoned this.
This was corrupt practice by the conspirators pure and simple and the same procedure was followed in respect of Tour save that, of course, he was actually one of them in bringing the unlawful litigation in the first place! He was still at SMBC (and, unbelievably, still is) and could have made a witness statement at the drop of a hat. He is a very devious man and knows when to keep his name off things and so no statement was forthcoming (and he knew he, personally, would have been slaughtered during the High Court proceedings if he was called to give evidence given his conduct at Sandwell). Once again, Stevens bizarrely added Tour’s evidence as hearsay in his own statement when Tour was not prepared to make one himself - truly incredible even by the "standards" of this lot.
(In any event the “evidence” of Knight and Tour was so prejudicial it was again of no benefit to McNally. They may have been bringing the case unlawfully but the venomous TPLM were actually doing an appalling job too.)
We have seen the incompetence of Lynch elsewhere, e.g. failing to properly serve the original papers and penal notice properly, and writing to try and agree a consent ORDER after McNally had withdrawn the malicious interim injunction application.
Lynch was clearly also confused about the law relating to hearsay evidence since she also wrote this incredible email to my brilliant Solicitor Mark Lewis of Patron Law:
Julia Lynch to Patron Law - 9th March, 2021:
"I do not understand your reference to "inadmissible hearsay" in view of the fact that … (2) the rules concerning hearsay do not operate in the civil courts …" WTF?
A major part of the problem with SMBC’s case is that the four Solicitors consistently put forward the absurd argument that I am not a journalist. They have been doing this for YEARS (and got short shrift on this in the High Court). Without trying to otherwise describe my function, Tour, Price, Lynch and Maher-Smith (TPLM) ridiculously claimed on behalf of McNally that I am a “data controller” so that I had “unlawfully processed” her data (in particular, the data that she herself had put on Twitter for the world to see lol!)
I immediately pointed out to Lynch that I am a journalist so that different rules apply. TPLM rejected this and in her own Court statement the increasingly desperate Lynch specifically stated that McNally sought an injunction as I had “denied being a date controller”! Very shortly before the High Court hearing McNally’s QC withdrew the absurd data protection arguments altogether - although my legal team had, by then, incurred considerable costs in preparing the arguments against the original, erroneous, and malicious assertions.
Of course, it is interesting that in the second round of statements, McNally’s only witnesses now were just Stevens (who was directly involved in the case) and Lynch, who had lost the first round legal battle and was now fighting to salvage something from the wreckage.
Despite warnings from me, and then Mark Lewis, Lynch deliberately tried to include without prejudice correspondence within the bundles. It will be recalled that when I was struggling to arrange legal representation I made efforts to agree a consent order with Lynch to stop the emergency injunction application. The emails were specifically marked as being “without prejudice” [i.e. "off the record"] but as late as the service of the second SMBC court bundle Lynch was deliberately including WP correspondence in an attempt to smear me and weaken my case - which was never going to work anyway since I never made any admissions in the emails - indeed I made it clear that I was vigorously contesting the whole cobbled-up claim. (Which I then did at considerable cost to myself even though I won on all points).
Even of the day of the hearing McNally’s QC (unlawfully funded by the taxpayer) had to withdraw documents from the bundle because of our objections to Lynch’s nasty stunt.
The funding of a case based on the personal Twitter use of an employee was unlawfully funded. Tour was trying to use the money from the £300,000 Legal Fund (Skidders passim) to finally nail me, and with Stevens, was easily able to con a gullible, thick, acting Council Leader that all was above board. Crompton was too stupid to ask questions and so the taxpayer lost over £100,000. I wrote to Crompton and to the external auditors Grant Thornton when there was still time to save some of the money but they failed to act.
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