Cadno's Complete Contempt - from this week's Carmarthenshire Herald

Here, to reach the parts that the printed version of the Carmarthenshire Herald doesn't, is this week's Cadno opinion piece;

Cadno’s Complete Contempt

In February 2002, Donald Rumsfeld, the then US Secretary of State for Defence, stated at a Defence Department briefing: ‘There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.’
Poor Donald 

Rumsfeld rather had the mickey taken out of him for that little lot, but careful examination suggests that what he said has both logic and is a sound way of testing hypotheses. You insert a hypothesis in one end of Rumsfeld’s statement, and at the other end it emerges either intact or in pieces. 

Here’s a hypothesis to test, readers: never mind what councillors and the public think, Carmarthenshire County Council, as a corporate entity, has no interest in
attempting to extract itself from what has rightly been described as a ‘toxic’ situation with blogger Jacqui Thompson. Cadno is not chewing over what Mr Justice Tugenhadt said and whether he was right, wrong, or both. Neither is Cadno remotely interested in how the case ended up in court in the first place. You play the ball from where it lies, not where you want it to be. We are now at the sticky end of litigation, everything that has been said has been said; everything that has been done has been done. Now is the time to pay the piper for the dance. 

The Council has no interest in the public relations cost of its present situation and, if one accepts that Mr James’s action against Mrs Thompson for damages is entirely a private matter (and Cadno is proud to have kept a straight face writing that phrase), then it has no interest in how, when, or whether Mr James chooses to
extract his pound of flesh. 

Except it does. 

Mr James would not have defended Mrs Thompson’s claim against him – offers to settle had been made – and would not have launched a counterclaim without the Council writing their Chief Executive a blank cheque. 

Moreover, the complaint by Mrs Thompson would not have arisen had not someone at the Council authorised Mr James to write the comments about Mrs Thompson and her family that he put – in his own name but with his employer’s authorisation – on another blog. 

The Council will not say who gave Mr James that authorisation, but three scenarios present themselves:
(1)   A senior councillor, possibly on the Executive Board, gave him the nod;
(2)   Mr James used his delegated powers to grant himself the authority to do so;
(3)   Some unminuted meeting took place in which a combination of senior officers and councillors signed off on the deed. 

Now, we know – because it is minuted (and the minutes have not been challenged) – that Mr James was authorised ‘by the Council’. 

That rules out number one, because even a leader of the council could not authorise Mr James to do as he did; we can rule out number two, because that would be an unconscionable action for which Mr James would already have been disciplined, if not dismissed; that leaves number three. The presence of councillors – or at least one shy and retiring type – would also be essential for three to work, due to the problem of officers using ‘delegated powers’ to bind the council to a course of action that they would or should have realised on any assessment would have led to at least the threat of litigation. 

So, the Council is as bound up in Mr James’s legal travails as Mr James is. 

Last week, the Council – through the unlikely personage of Eryl Morgan (aka Linda Rees Jones) – claimed that Mr James’s action was wholly private in nature. 

Don’t make me laugh, readers.
That’s comedy gold on its own. 

What the Chair of the Council determined (hahaha) is that the Council should not discuss matters in which it has spent the money for the benefit of a private individual who just happens to be its most senior employee. 

But what got Cadno was the suggestion that somehow even bringing forward the matter for discussion could constitute contempt of court by Cllrs Alun Lenny and Cefin Campbell. 

Umm. You’re having a laugh, is Cadno’s response to that.

‘Publication made as or as part of a discussion in good faith of public affairs or other matters of general public interest is not to be treated as a contempt of court
under the strict liability rule if the risk of impediment or prejudice to particular legal proceedings is merely incidental to the discussion’. Contempt of Court Act 1981 s5. 

Obviously an aspect of statute law of which Cllr Eryl Morgan was unaware. Cadno suggests asking Cllr Morgan about it when you see him out and about. Your discussions of what is and is not contempt of court with Eryl Morgan should be refreshing and enlightening. 

Of course, Eryl Morgan might have had in mind the provisions Part 81.12 of the Civil Procedure Rules, expressly ‘interference with the due administration of justice
in connection with proceedings’. But that wouldn’t even come close to biting in the case of the councillors’ rejected motion. 

Thankfully, Cadno is prepared to help Eryl Morgan out. In 2012, Appendix F of the Law Commission’s report 209 provided a list of all the statutory and regulatory
provisions under which it is possible to commit contempt of court. 

The ‘Thou Shalt not Annoy Senior Council Officers Act’, or the ‘Sabre-Rattling (Causes) Act’ were not among them. 

With nigh on a quarter of a million pounds of public money spent on court costs in support of Mr James (including the counterclaim costs, which seem to have vanished), plus hundreds – if not thousands – of officer hours spent on the matter, the idea that there is no public interest in what happens next is bonkers. The idea that a public employee who could benefit to the tune of £35K in his own right as a result of that money being spent should not have his promise to remit the money to his employer (curse those unchallenged minutes!) discussed in public by the body which bankrolled him is similarly crackers. 

Any suggestion that contempt of court is even possible in these circumstances is not only nonsense but nonsense on stilts. Nonsense on stilts on stilts on top of scaffolding poles. 

The law of contempt, however carelessly waved around, is not a cloak behind which a body like the Council can try and hide things it does not want discussed. 

Now we look at those known unknowns, readers: how many councillors are prepared to do something about it?

(Reproduced with permission)

See also recent posts on this blog, including, The Vice-like grip and from Cneifiwr's blog, Contempt and Mr James's legal glacier

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I'd also like to add the following - an observation, received from a correspondent, and included in a letter to a Member of Parliament;

"Whenever I think that this matter has reached rock bottom and can’t possibly sink any lower events disabuse me of this conclusion.  There is a sinister irony of Orwellian proportions when democratically elected representatives invoke the rule of law to undermine it.  These acts of abuse and, put in religious terms, desecration of the rule of law, are risible and reprehensible. This travesty applies to the denial of Sian Caiach’s question and the denial to allow the motion to be put by Cllrs Lenny and Campbell; a motion that was limp and pathetically inadequate and yet even this miserable offering roused the angst and paranoid thuggery that masquerades as democracy in County Hall.  
I am not privy to every aspect of the current chief executive’s behaviour, nor his performance in carrying out his public function, but from what I know of it, he seems to have a cavalier approach to compliance with the law and an unhealthy disrespect for democracy.  As such he should be dismissed for gross misconduct...."

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