Please instruct private investigators to find out who’s who in this picture.
A couple who instructed listed law firm Gateley have picked a new firm after its costly mistake saw their windfall judgment set aside.
Neil Sands and his wife, fashion influencer Donna Sands, were initially awarded damages of £300,000 and their £1.5m legal costs in the High Court of Northern Ireland after they sued gossip website Tattle Life over “vile” comments posted on its discussion threads.
Tattle Life was run entirely anonymously, so the court allowed Gateley to send the Sands’ statement of claim and other legal documents to a generic email address which was the website’s only given contact point.
When no replies were forthcoming, the court awarded the Sands judgment in default in December 2023. At its peak, Tattle Life was generating £500k a year and the court also imposed a £1.8m worldwide freezing order over its assets.
However, two years later Tattle Life’s owner stepped out of the shadows and applied to set the orders aside. Sebastian Bond claimed not to have known there were proceedings against him as the judge had placed a reporting restriction over the case. He said the Tattle Life email account was unmonitered and that he only found out about the case when someone breached the reporting restriction and leaked the details on Reddit.
It was revealed during the proceedings that Gateley had been able to see that all the legal documents they were emailing to the Tattle Life address were never opened, because getting access to them required a code which was never requested.
Bond also claimed that Gateley and the Sands had known that he was the owner of Tattle Life, but hadn’t disclosed that to the court, either. It transpired that the Sands hired private investigators before they brought proceedings who concluded in June 2023 that Bond was linked to Tattle Life, even placing his home under surveillance.
Rory Lynch, the Gateley partner in charge of the matter and its Head of Reputation, initially testified that there was a “legal and moral duty” to only disclose Bond’s name to the court when they were “100% sure” he was the owner.
In a follow-up affidavit to “clarify my state of knowledge and my thinking”, Lynch explained that his earlier testimony had been “incomplete” and that knowledge of Bond’s involvement “ought to have been disclosed to the court at the time”.
Apologising to the court, Lynch asked it “to conclude that these were honest mistakes, not intended to mislead or create any tactical advantage”.
The judge declined to strike out the case as an abuse of process, but said that the court “has been misled” and that “On Mr Lynch’s averment this was an honest mistake, not a tactical decision, but it is clear that it led to substantial litigation advantage”.
Ruling that Gateley’s failure to disclose its knowledge of Bond’s identity and the unopened email attachments were “egregious” breaches, he said he was setting aside the freezing order and the orders awarding the Sands damages and costs “without hesitation”.
The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland has now granted the Sands permission to appeal that decision, although the couple have instructed another firm, Arthur Cox, on the matter.
A spokesperson for Gateley told ROF, “The operator of Tattle Life was deliberately anonymous. We were never 100% certain it was Bond until he came forward”.
They said the firm also had evidence that Bond had seen the emails it sent, and that he just hadn’t opened the attachments.
“We secured a substituted service order to serve proceedings on the complaints email listed on the Tattle Life website. All emails effecting service returned delivery receipts and no bounce backs. Therefore, we operated on the basis that Bond was validly served throughout but chose to ignore us. We adduced email tracer evidence to the court that the complaints email was being accessed during proceedings.”
“Bond also set up a Hong Kong company and dissipated assets offshore after the damages and costs order was served. Tellingly, Bond refused to testify on service.”
“We continue the fight against online harms and are proud to be part of the team that unmasked Bond, who the court ruled ‘profited from other people’s misery’ while remaining in the shadows. We dispute Bond’s claim he never knew of the proceedings and are hopeful the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland will rule valid service was effected.”
It’s been a tough stretch for Gateley, whose CEO quit this week amid poor financial results and plans for an emergency restructuring.