News
Court of Appeal refuses permission to appeal to the St Paul’s protesters
DATE: 22 Feb 2012This morning the Court of Appeal (Lord Neuberger MR, Stanley Burnton & Macfarlane LJJ) handed down a detailed judgment in which it refused the protesters currently occupying the land around St Paul’s Cathedral permission to appeal against the High Court decision of Lindblom J of 18th January 2012.
Lindblom J had allowed the City of London Corporation’s claims for possession, injunctions and declarations in respect of the St Paul’s churchyard area (comprising both highway owned by the City and church land) following a 5 day trial at the end of December 2011.
The Court of Appeal, dismissing all 5 applications for permission to appeal, held that “far from it not being open to the Judge to make the orders that he made, it seems to us that there is a very powerful case indeed for saying that, if he had refused to make any order in the City’s favour, this court would have reversed him” (at [44]).
The Court considered the essential point in the case was that it was very difficult to see how the protesters’ Article 10 and 11 ECHR rights “could ever prevail against the will of the landowner, when they are continuously and exclusively occupying public land, breaching not just the owner’s property rights and certain statutory provisions, but significantly interfering with public and Convention rights of others, and causing other problems (connected with health, nuisance, and the like), particularly in circumstances where the occupation has already continued for months, and is likely to continue indefinitely” (at [49]).
David Forsdick and Zoe Leventhal appeared for the City of London Corporation in the Court of Appeal and the High Court.
