03/02/2020 Hegglin v Person(s) Unknown & Anor [2014] EWHC 2808 (QB) (31 July 2014) HTML VERSION OF JUDGMENT ____________________ Crown Copyright © MR. JUSTICE BEAN: 1. The claimant is a businessman and investor who previously lived in London and worked at Morgan Stanley in London but is currently resident in Hong Kong. He continues to have very close connections with the United Kingdom where he has a house and carries out substantial business. He is a director of a company which is in the process of preparing to list on the London Stock Exchange. 2. An anonymous individual, or possibly group of individuals, has been posting on a large number of internet websites abusive and defamatory allegations about the claimant. It is alleged by way of example that he is a murderer, a Nazi, a Ku Klux Klan sympathiser, a paedophile, a corrupt businessman who has accepted bribes from state officials, an insider trader, and that he has laundered money on behalf of the Italian Mafia. There is no evidence to suggest that any of this is true. 3. The claim form was issued on 20th June 2014. As yet, there have been no further pleadings. The claim against the second defendant (Google Inc.) is for an injunction pursuant to sections 10 and/or 14 of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the European Directive 95/46/EC: "to prevent the processing of personal data of the claimant which is inaccurate and/or which is causing or is likely to cause him substantial damage or substantial distress." 4. There is also a claim for a Norwich Pharmacal order requiring Google to disclose such information within its possession or control as may be necessary for the claimant to identify the first defendant. 5. Google Inc. is incorporated in Delaware and located in California, and permission is accordingly required to serve proceedings on them out of the jurisdiction. Because the relief sought by the claimant was in the form of injunctions, his advisers sensibly made the application directly to a judge (in the event myself), along with an application for an interim injunction and a Norwich Pharmacal order. 6. These applications came before me two days ago. The original application notice had sought an interim injunction of relatively limited scope requiring Google to block specific sites listed in a schedule. 7. By a draft amended application notice served less than two clear working days before the hearing, the claimant applied for more extensive relief, requiring Google to take all reasonable and proportionate technical steps as might be necessary in order to ensure that such material does not appear as snippets in Google search results. I was not prepared to allow this greatly expanded application to be made on short notice and, in any event, it seemed to me that issues which it raised could only be determined at a trial. 8. I fixed the trial date for 24th November and gave directions which included the sequential service of expert evidence, first by Google and then by the claimant. In addition, I made a Norwich Pharmacal order about which there was little dispute. I should also record that Google have been taking steps to block specified sites containing the abusive material. 9. Before giving directions for trial or making any other order, I had heard argument on the issue of leave to serve the claim form out of the jurisdiction and granted that application for reasons to be given today. I am now giving those reasons. 10. The basic principles to be applied by the court in determining whether to exercise its discretion to grant permission to serve out of the jurisdiction are clear and well-established: (1) The claimant must satisfy the court that there is a serious issue to be tried on the merits of the claim. In other words, there has to be a real as opposed to a fanciful prospect of success on the substantive claim. www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2014/2808.html 2/4