The Story so Far
In Part One we saw that Lisa McNally [Director of Public Health at deeply corrupt Labour Sandwell Council - now in Government “special measures”] conspired with Labour Cllr Maria Crompton, now-disgraced and sacked Chief Executive David Stevens, Sandwell Council’s highly controversial Monitoring Officer Surjit Tour, and others, to bring a malicious and unlawfully funded High Court case against me in respect of McNally’s personal Twitter account. Other Solicitors, Maria Price, Julia Lynch and Vanessa Maher-Smith, gleefully joined the party. Lynch’s vicious conduct during the Protocol process was set out in Part One.
McNally sought an interim injunction (with penal notice) and, once that was granted, a “permanent” injunction. Despite her generous salary of in excess of £105k plus gold-plated pension she belatedly decided to unlawfully use taxpayers’ funds to further enrich herself with a claim for £10,000 damages.
My brilliant Solicitor, Mark Lewis of Patron Law in London, immediately forced McNally and her co-conspirators to drop the application for an Interim Injunction (with costs against McNally) but this malicious piece of work pressed on with the case - relying on the unlawful funding from the taxpayer to try to screw me (and you).
Mark Lewis immediately countered with an application to strike out the entire claim but in this (and the part three - to follow) I will discuss the “evidence” McNally herself presented to the Court.
McNally’s Own Evidence
It must be remembered before I start, that Tour, Price, Lynch and Maher-Smith are all qualified Solicitors who, via a conspiracy with others, were purporting to “act” for McNally. Even this is strange since these Solicitors knew they were funding McNally unlawfully, so that rather than state that they were “acting” for her, they were “supporting” her. This was total nonsense to save these four from having to comply with normal solicitor/client regulatory provisions (when their Client is actually the Council) and to misuse taxpayers’ funds to pay for the private action of a private individual.
As it is, these Solicitors placed SMBC legal department on the Court record as officially acting for McNally in her private capacity and so were also automatically in breach of (a) their contracts of employment/the Constitution of the Council and (b) in breach of the regulatory provisions of The Law Society. Their unlawful action, motivated by malice towards me, cost the taxpayer in excess of £100,000.
Incidentally, it is worth noting that Councils DO have the legal power to protect employees who are being harassed and, indeed, there are frequently reported cases of this type of action. But the four Solicitors (plus Maria Crompton and David Stevens) knew that they could not bring a claim in the name of SMBC itself because (a) there was no way, quantitatively of qualitatively, that my journalism amounted to harassment and, more particularly, (b) the matters complained of related to McNally’s personal Twitter account and not to anything she was doing in her capacity as a highly-paid Sandwell Council employee. The proper advice from the four Solicitors, had they not been determined to unlawfully act in concert, would have been to advise McNally to take her malicious personal case to any private solicitor who was daft enough to act for her (and she would have struggled to find one as her case was so weak - hence why SMBC decided to misuse public funds to unlawfully pay for her instead!)
It should also be remembered that the four Solicitors are also, legally, “Officers of the Court”, and have a general duty of candour in litigation and specific responsibilities TO THE COURT, as set out in detailed rules.
Readers of Part One will recall that Lynch dropped a 529-page “court bundle” on me during the protocol process. This was riddled with irrelevant and prejudicial material which Lynch and her co-conspirators hoped would prevent me from getting legal representation (as well as smearing me).
I don’t know why, but I immediately noticed that McNally and the four Solicitors had NOT included the "4th January email" and I shall come back to this in the next part. Suffice to say here that my view is that this was a deliberate omission by McNally, Tour and Lynch.
The 529-page bundle contained McNally’s first witness statement which she told the Court was true and accurate. I will deal with her principal contentions and, where applicable, state the replies I made to the Court in my own statement(s).
“Attacks” - McNally stated that I “regularly” attacked her on social media. I was able to show that I wrote a limited number of blog posts over a period of many months and only reacting to HER own social media output. For example, when she attacked the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation for failing to prioritise teachers for Covid vaccinations, I questioned her medical qualifications against those of the experts on the Committee. Everything I wrote, she said, was not “comment” but “an attack” on her.
“Other attacks” - we saw in Part One that Lynch, a Solicitor, seriously argued that anything written by others which was in anyway critical of McNally was MY legal responsibility. McNally specifically complained that I was somehow responsible when someone replied to one of my posts calling her a “basket case”!
“Mental Health” - McNally claimed I “ridiculed” her self-described mental health issues when I simply did not. She took particular exception to my question whether she had declared her medical history to SMBC when she applied for the job (although she declined to tell the Court whether she did or not!)
“Joke” - I made a very obvious (and old) joke about doctors when trying to differentiate between medical doctors (which McNally is not) and academic doctors (which McNally is). But she claimed that this was somehow designed to humiliate her, specifically, as a professional and as a person.
“Qualifications” - when I wrote about her qualifications she claimed that I was “questioning her qualifications and integrity”. I was not. I set out details of her qualifications and stated in black and white that she was entitled to use the academic title “Dr” and that her qualifications were sufficient to work as a Director of Public Health. It was there for all to see.
“Other Individuals” - McNally’s repeated questioning of Government policy, Including specific medical policy, led others to also start researching her qualifications independently of myself (which was hardly surprising, although not a task undertaken by her chorus of supporters in the mainstream media). Nevertheless, McNally blamed ME for this: “This is very distressing to me to know that not only is Julian Saunders researching into my qualifications and history but that his actions have encouraged others to join him.” This was absurd - as well as being untrue - yet the four Solicitors included this in her claim even though there was no legal basis for this.
“An Anonymous Twitter Account” - Someone else “aggressively” asked her about her qualifications and she again tried to imply that I was somehow responsible for this. (Indeed, the link she made between this and my blog possibly tries to infer that I actually WAS the anonymous Tweeter!)
“No Request” - McNally lied to the Court saying, “I have not received a request from Julian Saunders asking about my qualifications”. This is a downright lie but I will deal with my email to her on this very subject in Part 3.
“Not Private” - when I started my blog the corrupt Labour Sandwell Council tried a trick to silence me. In replying to questions I raised they sometimes replied under the heading “Private and Confidential” and then suggested that I could not use the contents since this would be a breach of confidentiality! (Yes, really!) Thus in all of my communications with the corrupt Council I head the correspondence “This is not a private and confidential communication”. Further, as I explained to the High Court, this was also fairer to the recipient since they were then aware that any response might be made public and could give that due consideration when formulating a response. This is simply fair journalism. The four Solicitors were all very well aware of this. But when I used this form of words sending in my official complaint about McNally (see Part One) she took this as an attack on her and that the implication was that I would make the complaint public (which would have been a fruitless exercise by me before the matter was investigated by SMBC). Again, perfectly normal and proper journalistic practice was perceived by McNally as a "personal attack" on her.
“Deliberate design” - McNally stated that my journalism was “carefully designed to cause the maximum amount of pain, humiliation and anxiety.”. Further this was part of a “campaign” - a word chosen deliberately as it is a feature of claims of harassment. None of this was true and whilst my writing can be hard-hitting, my blogs were reactive to her own public utterances.
“Tagging” - because I advertise my blog posts on social media McNally claimed that I wanted to make her (alleged) humiliation public - when.of course, the posts themselves are "public". It should be noted that in my own evidence I produced “attacks” via Twitter BY McNally on a number of individuals (even medical experts) who, by this warped yardstick, she presumably intended to publicly humiliate!
“Report to Twitter” - we have seen elsewhere that Jayne Haynes of the Birmingham Mail, the Late George Makin, a Local Democracy "Reporter", and former Labour Councillor, John “Jedward” Edwards, tried to organise a Twitter “pile on” on behalf of McNally to attack my Twitter account. This failed but I questioned in the Protocol process why McNally had not reported her supposed concerns to Twitter. Lynch did not deal with this, but then in her Court statement McNally claimed, “I have reported tweets of Julian Saunders to Twitter that I have found offensive”. As this can only be done in writing and there is a document trail, myself and my legal team pressed Lynch to produce evidence of McNally's alleged complaints which she singularly failed to do. Make your own minds up on that although Lynch still left the original allegation in the Court papers for the strike out hearing in an effort to con the Judge that it was true.
“Mental Health” - McNally claimed that her mental health had “deteriorated significantly” due to my supposed attacks. Of course, it was difficult for me to contest her allegations of "sleeplessness" and "anxiety" but she dropped herself in it by making specific contentions, bearing in mind that she very frequently tweeted about her incessant fitness programmes. Thus she told the Court she had “lost weight” whereas I put up one of her Tweets from the material time when she was specifically complaining of weight GAIN. She stated she was “barely able to function” whilst continuously tweeting about her long hours battling the Covid pandemic. She stated she was “physically exhausted” yet I was able to refer to a very large number of tweets when she was frequently boasting of her fitness and that some of her physical test results “have never been better”.
“Facial Twitch” - McNally claimed she had this affliction as a direct result of my journalism. Happily, McNally was very keen on going in front of TV and video cameras and so I was able to refer the Court to much interview footage where there was no sign whatsoever of a “facial twitch”.
“Resignation” - McNally claimed she was going to resign because of my journalism but was talked out of it by Stevens and Tour - two of the main conspirators behind this unlawful litigation!
“Occupational Health Physician” - I will deal with this in part three.
“Smears” - McNally deliberately tried to smear me. Despite the fact that my journalism was reactive to her own output she told the Court: “I am constantly living in dread of what Julian Saunders will do next … I am concerned that he will find out where I live and turn his attention to my family.” This is just appalling stuff to try and get the sympathy of the Court when there was no evidence at all that I was pursuing her family. (As it was, research conducted to defend myself during the Court case threw up something about a family member which McNally very probably does want to keep out of the public domain!)
“Use of Twitter” - McNally claimed that she used her Twitter account for work purposes which was another lie. It was a purely private Twitter account - as the four Solicitors very well knew.
“Facebook” - McNally claimed she had "deactivated her Facebook account” but even if this was not another lie, she could not resist reactivating it during the currency of the Court case - which, of course, I was very pleased to tell the Court about. Presumably the four Solicitors condoned this despite her written evidence.
“Effect of Job” - Despite her constant tweeting about how hard she was working, McNally claimed my journalism had affected her ability to do her job. She claimed that she had specifically not attended a Live Facebook event in case I intervened even though, as I told the Court, I have never attended a Facebook Live event of ANY sort. This was all fantasy designed to smear me (although she was particularly exercised when I tagged a tweet to one of her principal mainstream media rimmers, Nick Owen, of the awful ‘Midlands Today’). In any event, my legal team and I prepared a detailed schedule of her very frequent media appearances, Far from dropping off, they actually became even more frequent during the relevant period!
“The Big Lie - the meet” - This was a whopper. McNally openly lied to the Court (and Lynch was well aware of this before the issue of proceedings): “I dread meeting Mr Saunders again”. I HAD NEVER MET McNALLY. This was a very deliberate lie noting that she was specifically seeking an injunction to stop me going anywhere near her and to seek my imprisonment if I did. The four Solicitors absolutely knew she was lying but deliberately left this in the Court statement.
“Meetings” - In her malicious attempt to get an injunction she tried to stop my lawfully attending Council meetings claiming she feared being “accosted” by me although she, er, never had been. Having claimed she had already met me when that was a lie she claimed. “I would find coming face to face with him a frightening prospect”!
“Public Gallery” - there is, of course, a large overhang at Oldbury Council House so that lawful visitors to the public gallery at Council meetings can’t see half the people in the Chamber. She claimed that she had attended a Cabinet meeting when I was somehow “intimidating” people from the public gallery but I only saw McNally at some meetings AFTER the court action. If she was actually there there, she was sitting somewhere I could not see her. She also complained that I took photos at Council meetings which, er, I am legally entitled to do! (Strangely, people looking over the barrier on the public gallery to see who is sitting beneath is a major bugbear of Surjit Tour.)
“The Link Reception” - McNally claimed that I frequently stood in the Link Reception after meetings which is, in itself, another lie. She stated that: “In order to get to my car I would have to go past him … which fills me with anxiety.” Firstly, it is very rarely that I am in the Link Reception at all. Secondly, she had never met me there. Thirdly, as I was able to show the Court, it is a lie that she would have to go through the Link to get to her car (and even if she did the wo/manned security office is situated right there). Just more lies and smears - supported by Tour & Co. - designed to prevent me from lawfully attending Council meetings.
“Never Spoken” - for once McNally actually told the truth in paragraph 33: “I have never spoken to him.”
“Twitter Suspension” - In February, 2021 McNally’s own - personal - Twitter account was suspended and I referred to this on Twitter. She claimed to the Court that I have nothing better to do than “watch and wait for any opportunity to mount the next attack”. Once again I was able to show the Court that it was a third party who had actually made public her suspension and many others had picked this up. Again she was seeking to smear me for issues she had with others who were also supposedly “attacking her”.
“Express and Star” - McNally claimed an E&S Journalist mentioned that I had written to them querying why they kept calling her “Dr” in articles which were specifically about medical issues (which was true) though the E&S and the journalist concerned specifically denied raising my enquiry letter with her in interview or otherwise. Take your pick and why shouldn't I have raised this anyway?
“Pressure on the Court” - Incredibly, McNally tried to put pressure on the Court by claiming that she “might have to give up” her job because of my journalism. She hasn't.
“Husband” - McNally wrote a whole paragraph about the alleged suffering of her husband but failed to adduce any evidence from him supporting this.
“The Council” - in perhaps the most absurd part of her statement, McNally claimed she was worried about the effect of my journalism “on the Council”. By the time of her statement I had been writing about the corruption at Labour Sandwell for over seven years and exposed multiple examples of wrongdoing - hence the conspiracy by Tour, Stevens and others to unlawfully bring this litigation to close me down!
“Stop Him” - She claimed in the final paragraph of statement one that I was succeeding in destroying her professionally and personally and added, “He is succeeding and I desperately hope we can find some way of making him stop.” Again a pathetic attempt to get the Court on her side - note the use of the word "we".
Once Mark Lewis had submitted the Strike-Out Application with a lengthy Statement from myself, McNally made a second statement which clearly had significant legal input from the four Solicitors unlawfully acting for her. Indeed, parts of it repeat well-worn allegations thrown at me by the foursome over the years and were straight out of “the playbook”. Legalistic language appeared - she referred to an “overarching argument” and an “overarching point”. She referred to a “dangerous precedent” and “precedent”. A distinctly "anti-male" line crept in with her curious and malicious allegation that I somehow thought women “deserved” humiliation (which as I pointed out, ignored the very large number of male wrongdoers my blog has exposed).
“Journalism” - McNally trod the well-worn path laid by the four Solicitors i.e. that I am not a journalist despite the large opus of my well-researched work over many years. Tour and Price particulalry believe that if they say this often enough it will somehow become true. But they were given short shrift in the High Court.
“Others” - Because I had commented on McNally’s video when she self-described serious mental health issues she claimed that “at least two people' had desisted from releasing similar videos. But she (and Lynch) failed to adduce evidence of the truth of this (and, in any event, I don’t suppose they were Directors of Health making films of themselves in the middle of a pandemic). She also claimed that far from the video being solipsistic, she was “encouraged by others” to make it - though, yet again, she did not say who, or produce evidence of this (despite filing a 529-page bundle).
“Return of the Joke” - my joke about doctors applied to both male and female ones but McNally again made a mountain out of a molehill claiming that it “degraded others on the basis of sex …”. She made the bizarre comment that I had made “crude suggestions of my promiscuity” which was news to me and my legal team. Her allegation now subtly changed to my journalism suggesting that a bad joke has no place in journalism or scrutiny - which will come as a shock to many mainstream media scribblers.
“Frequency” - as above, three top lawyers stated unequivocally that there was nothing “qualitatively or quantitatively” in my posts which constituted harassment but McNally continued to say otherwise - ignoring, again as above, that the posts were all reactive to things SHE had said or done (e.g. putting up the petition favouring teachers for vaccinations) on her private Twitter stream. But then she was screwing taxpayers to unlawfully fund her malicious campaign.
“Personal Twitter Account” - McNally was finally forced to admit the bleedin' obvious i.e. that her Twitter account is a personal one (a vital point given SMBC’s unlawful funding of her action) but made the wholly irrelevant point that she also used it to disseminate “public health information”. This is the very question Lynch had refused to deal with right from the start in her dash to issue the Court proceedings.
“Blocking” - there was a bizarre episode when McNally suddenly started blocking anyone who followed me. There was an outcry from a number of people on Twitter and she stopped. She then lied to the Court that the allegation about what she was doing was “demonstrably untrue”. Of course, I duly submitted a bundle of screenshots from the period showing clearly that the allegation was demonstrably true! One has to wonder again what her Solicitors/co-conspirators were playing at since this episode had plenty of coverage and yet they allowed her to lie? They ignored vital evidence and allowed her to give false evidence in her SECOND witness statement as well as her first. McNally tried to qualify her position by suggesting that she only blocked people who “liked” my “attacks” on her which, again, I was able to show was a lie with the relevant screenshots. As above, I also produced a schedule of her own abusive tweets.
“Mental Health” - McNally claimed that she did not mention HER mental health for three months after the video debacle (although I DID mention in my journalism that many folk were having mental health problems during the pandemic). She then mentioned that she commented on Twitter about someone else’s mental health video but failed to tell the Court that I made no mention of this at all despite allegedly spending my entire life stalking her and waiting to comment adversely on mental health issues. Incredible.
“Complaint” - I had frequently made the point that McNally never made any complaint to me over many months either generally or in accordance with the legal notice at the bottom of each of my blog posts. McNally tried to get round this by claiming - without any justificationnwhatsoever - that any complaint would have been useless as I would have done nothing. Once again I was able to explain to the Court my previous run-in with the High Court so that I was now extremely careful about such matters and had specifically placed the legal notices on each post to deal with any issues arising. Further, contrary to Mystic Mc’s claims, I was also able to show that I actually do deal with the very small number of complaints I receive - thoroughly and appropriately. McNally then undermined her feeble argument by claiming the real reason she had not bothered to use the complaints procedure (besides her being "above" such things) was that: “I have always followed the advice given to me by friends, family and colleagues, which was never to engage with him in any way.” Of course, that was precisely the advice given out regularly by Surjit Tour (and which led, for example, to a number of Councillors unnecessarily becoming Defendants in a High Court action). As mentioned previously, Lynch seemed to be vaguely aware that the lack of complaint might be a problem and bizarrely stated in writing that the Protocol Letter itself constituted “McNally’s complaint”!
“Press” - Once again Mcnally said she had refused some press interviews (which is hardly surprising noting that the local mainstream media were all over her). But, as above, the schedule I presented showed no let-up in her media appearances as alleged or at all.
“Dr” - McNally made the absurd statement that I could not show that she had claimed herself to be a medical doctor (which is hardly surprising as this can be a criminal offence). I have explained above how I set out her qualifications and was specific that she (and others) were qualified to be public health directors despite NOT being medical doctors. She claimed that I never “attacked” (it’s always an “attack”) other directors of public health whereas I did raise this issue via social media and directly with the BMJ, plus a couple of national media organisations. In any event, my blog is specifically about Sandwell and not anywhere else.
“Ability” - despite saying in her first statement that my journalism had materially affected her ability to do her job, McNally now boasted to the Court: “Evidence of my ability to do my job is in abundance”! Lol!
“Political Restriction” - besides being in a politically restricted post McNally claimed, “It is not political for a DPH to highlight and respond to problems [as perceived by McNally] in the national response to a pandemic (indeed, it could be perceived as an inappropriately political act to remain silent when we do identify problems).” Most people would take this as a very clear statement that even though she agreed to contract to a politically restricted post she personally does not accept that the rules apply to her. Indeed she got the Association of Public Health Directors to back her after allegedly reviewing some of her media output. No doubt this excluded McNally’s direct abuse of other people on Twitter.
“Inequality” - McNally claims that it is appropriate for her to comment so frequently on inequality as a cause of health issues (which is blindingly obvious) but there is a professional way of referring to this and a political one. Exercising my right as a journalist to free speech I took the view she had crossed the line. But McNally wants free speech for herself and not for anyone who expresses a contrary view.
“Hiatus” - McNally said I had not been writing about her during the currency of the Court case but then went on to cite examples, er, when I had! Needless to say these were evidence of continued “attacks” even though one concerned the outcome of a Freedom of Information Request. McNally claimed I wrote a blog “without ensuring that the information is correct” when the information had been supplied by Sandwell Council via the same FOI reply! She told the Court that this was further harassment of her. Lynch deliberately allowed this absurdity to be put in a formal witness statement.
“Threat 2” - Despite withdrawing her own “emergency” injunction application, McNally went even further in her second statement to influence the Court in a truly reprehensible way. I need to quote the last two paragraphs in full. Once again, what were the four Solicitors doing to allow this in when they knew it was unlikely to be true (although, of course, they were co-conspirators and actors in this matter and had a vested interest in my destruction)? They were not acting as independent Solicitors nor in the interest of SMBC in any way):
“33 If my application for an injunction is refused, Mr Saunders will clearly resume his hostility. I can’t go through that again and neither can my family. I would at the very least need to leave Sandwell Council and a job I otherwise love. However, since Mr Saunders has previously proved that he is willing to pursue people he doesn’t like after they leave Sandwell, I will have to stop working in any position that involved any degree of public profile.
34 My career, and my health, depend on the outcome of the case and so I respectfully urge the court to help me find some relief from his attacks and grant an injunction.”
Of course, this was yet another massive lie as she lost her case on ALL counts yet remains DPH at SMBC to this day.
After the case, my brilliant Solicitor Mark Lewis of Patron Law, wrote to SMBC on 12th August, 2021:
"In your evidence, it was stated that Ms McNally would resign if she did not obtain an injunction. Please confirm that her notice has been tendered and indicates when it will be operative from. If not, please explain why such an unequivocal statement was made to the Court supported by a Statement of Truth? You will appreciate that such is a very serious matter. We suggest that any individuals complicit in such action seek independent advice. We reserve our client's rights against all such individuals if the court has been misled."
This was the absurd reply from SMBC Solicitor Maria Price on 16 August 2021: "As regards Ms McNally tending her resignation, your interpretation of her statement is disputed." Make your own minds up on that one folks!
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