03/02/2020 Johnson v Steele & Ors [2014] EWHC B24 (QB) (29 October 2014) 2. The claimant, Mr. Richard Johnson, has explained his background to some extent in his evidence, which he has gone into the witness box to confirm. He had a City & Guilds qualification when he began his career in the building industry and he then had a remedial wall tie business for some 20 years from 1990. He became a specialist in dispute resolution in the building industry, and also a building contract co-ordinator. Also part of his skill is as a party wall surveyor. 3. He has a diploma in English law at the Open University and is an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Building. He intends to complete, in due course, a law degree and to qualify as a solicitor. 4. As I said a moment ago, he has gone into the witness box and told me of the huge impact on him of the publications complained of in these proceedings, the stress, the anxiety that he has suffered and how it has impacted on his family over many, many months. 5. In the course of his work, Mr. Johnson came across one of Mr. Steele's twitter accounts which was linked to a website. That was his first introduction to Mr. Steele, of whom he had never heard before. Mr. Johnson soon gathered that the blog purporting to be a helpline was really a means of promoting Mr. Steele's own damp-proofing business. He was also using it to make scurrilous statements about others under the cloak of anonymity. Mr. Johnson set about attempting to identify who was behind this, and managed to trace the source of the allegations eventually to Mr. Steele. 6. In the background was the fact that Mr. Steele had an ongoing dispute with a body called the Property Care Association ('PCA'). Mr. Steele regularly made anonymous attacks on the PCA and Mr. Johnson took up the defence of the PCA online. Mr. Steele has been carrying on a campaign against members of the PCA over the years since about 2007. This was addressed in evidence for the hearing from two witnesses, Mr. Hindle and Mr. Hodgkin. 7. Mr. Johnson found himself the victim of a sustained attack by way of blogs and twitter accounts, which were authored and published by Mr. Steele, attempting again to use various means of anonymity, or obscuring his identity. 8. The central part of the claim focuses upon two blogs. I need not identify those. Various serious allegations of dishonesty, misconduct, criminal offences, and so on, were made, which had no basis and which I do not propose to repeat in the course of this judgment, which would only give them further currency. Suffice to say they are allegations of the most serious and distressing kind. 9. Mr. Steele launched two twitter accounts in addition attacking Mr. Johnson. In July 2012 he launched another twitter attack upon him. Similar serious allegations of dishonesty and misconduct were made. As was pointed out in the course of the evidence, during 24 hours between 26th and 27th January 2013, there were no less than 129 defamatory tweets on one of the accounts. 10. It has been made clear by Mr. Spooner in the course of his submissions that although the claim focuses upon the period, broadly speaking, of November 2011 to June 2013, those are essentially samples, albeit many samples, of a wider pattern of conduct. In order to keep the action down to reasonable proportions, the claim was limited to the period which I have identified, but it was a continuing onslaught via the internet, characterised by Mr. Spooner as "cyber bullying". 11. When it comes to assessing damages in any defamation case, the court is concerned to consider the gravity of the allegations and the scale of publication. Mr. Johnson provided evidence and gave his own estimate as best he could in the light of his experience over the last two or three years. I think it is safe to say that the readership of these allegations will have been numbered in the thousands and possibly more, possibly in the tens of thousands, but certainly many thousands. There is also coverage of this topic in the evidence of Mr. Brian Hindle. 12. Mr. Spooner has been emphatic in his application for aggravated damages in this case, which are, of course, concerned to compensate a claimant for rubbing salt in the wound - aggravation to hurt feelings caused by the original publications. In this case, the conduct of the defendant has been quite extraordinary over many, many months, as I have already made clear. He has done everything he can to cause the maximum damage to Mr. Johnson's reputation, while hiding behind anonymity as best he could. There has been no question of any apology or anything to mitigate the effect of the damaging www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2014/B24.html 2/3