Name and Shame UK
We expose the dirty deedsters
Using the law to cover up your own lawbreaking
Vigilante writes:
This is a story about a man who continually flouts the law. He seems to think the law does not apply to him and he is helped in this respect by people who should be enforcing the regulations but allow him to get away with his misdemeanours. However, our wrongdoer is a rich man and his money may, in the past, have bought him some favours. If so, this may explain why he is not made to obey the law.
Then, one day he pushes his luck too far and finds he has several adversaries who are determined to put a stop to his illegal activities. They decide to expose him by publishing an account of his misdeeds. At first he tries to ignore it. After all, he is rich and he no longer shares the same social status as those who now oppose him. The days of working from the back of his van are long gone. He has moved on and now has his own company employing quite a number of people. He networks in the right circles and gets contracts from major national companies. He sees himself as a big important man. Consequently, he is not prepared to suffer from the activities of those who oppose him because they are beneath him. He forgets that, before his personal fortunes increased, he used to be just like them. But that doesn't count. Some of them are becoming a thorn in his side. Not to worry ... he has friends in high places who can soon put these people in their place. If he makes a few random allegations, his friends will soon be on the case.
Unfortunately for him, some of his opponents are made of sterner stuff. They realise that the minute you give in to a bully, your cause is lost. But most bullies are cowards and it shows as soon as you square up to them because they won't come out and face you. They sneak off and resort to dirty tricks.
In this case, the dirty tricks are carried out by members of the legal profession. They are going to earn big money from this man who regularly flouts the law; and they are going to use the law to hit back at his adversaries. They will do everything in their power to suppress the truth.
Good plot for a novel? You might think so but we are talking about a real life incident. It's actually happening and it's happening now - right here in the United Kingdom; the nation where honesty and truth used to prevail. But times have changed.
Read on to learn more ...
The story in a nutshell
In October 2007, we received a report from a lady in Ilkeston who had a serious grievance against her industrial neighbour. We shall call her DC.
The company in question, Rayden Engineering Ltd, had seemingly taken illegal possession of a triangular plot of land behind her house. They fenced it off with an 8-foot high steel barrier, destroyed and removed the existing trees and vegetation and then covered the plot with compacted hardcore. In doing so, they reduced the effectiveness of what had previously been a soak-away for a recognised high risk flood plain and, by removing all the vegetation, they also destroyed nature's way of absorbing pollutants. And by moving heavy vehicles and lifting equipment onto this land, it is also quite likely that the drainage culvert to the river was damaged or destroyed.
When heavy rains struck in June 2007, the water accumulated on the converted land and finally overspilled, flooding through the ground floors of 15 adjacent houses, including our correspondent's.
Severn Trent Water have suggested the culvert from Rayden's land to the River Erewash could be fractured but no checks have actually been made. In normal circumstances, excess water from the land should drain into the river but during high river levels a flap valve on the river bank closes to prevent water flooding back through the culvert on to the land. But since the contours of the flood plain had been altered, and the porosity destroyed by layers of hardcore, the waters took the only remaining route - through the houses.
DC had warned this might happen and she had done everything in her power to get Erewash Borough Council, the Environment Agency and Derbyshire Police to act responsibly and enforce legislation which would have stopped this happening. But when it came to the crunch, although the authorities sometimes made the right noises, they actually did nothing. They effectively let Rayden Engineering get away with flouting the law.
DC decided her only remaining option was to go public. She wrote to several campaigning websites she found on the internet telling her story in full. We were one of the websites she contacted. As we stated earlier, this was in October 2007.
There were several points that aroused our interest:
- We were concerned that flooding becomes more widespread and frequent with consequences that make it virtually impossible for householders to insure against future losses. We don't hold with the current climate change rubbish but we do notice that local authorities constantly allow developers to build on established flood plains. It cannot be right to cover flood plains with concrete and expose householders to the inevitable damage that will occur during times of excessive rainfall. Click here to read a newspaper article on the subject.
- We take the view that corruption is rife in many (if not all) local authorities. It is common knowledge that officers and councillors take backhanders in return for favours and the injustices are usually exposed when those who refuse to pay for favours are made to suffer by having the rulebook thrown at them - the same rulebook that is ignored for those who do pay up.
- Our curiosity is naturally aroused when we recognise a clique operating - a situation that becomes obvious when members of the same organisation pull strings for each other yet victimise those who are not members of their club. When laws are ignored for members but used against non-members we feel this should be exposed.
Having made certain independent enquiries which confirmed some of the information supplied by DC, we decided it was in the public interest to publish DC's letter and we did so on 4th March 2008, five months after we received the original email. The published page is contained in this PDF which is the same document we sent to DC advising that we had accepted her report.
During our investigations, we discovered that DC's story had already been published on the Rotten Borough website so the material was already in the public domain. This page from the Web Archive Organisation's WayBackMachine shows that it was published on or before 9th November 2007 - almost four months before our own publication and the date is verified on the PDF version of the page. The link from Rotten Borough's home page is shown on page 2 and the original content starts on page 8.
BY the time we published, DC had also launched her own website so that others could see how badly victims could suffer from the uncaring attitudes of bureaucrats and their associates. DC's site provided plenty of evidence - documented and filmed - that she was absolutely right to expose the culprits.
***
Everything went well. In the first month - March 2008 - our traffic reports showed that the new page was visited by 117 people. In April it attracted further attention including visits from 28 people who searched for 'Rayden Engineering' and 6 who searched for 'Erewash Borough Council'.
We did not run any reports for May, June or July but at 14:35 on 22nd August and at 11:55 on 26th August 2008 we had visits from someone using a server bearing Rayden's name. At 15:54 on 26th August we had a visit from the server identified as belonging to Rayden's solicitors - Berryman Shacklock. This proves that someone at Rayden Engineering knew about the content on our website ten months before any approach was made to us about it. And since the visit by Berryman's was made only four hours after Rayden's second visit, it is clear Richard Hayden did not waste too much time before contacting his solicitor.
***
The Legal Threats Start
On Saturday 20th June 2009 I received a recorded delivery letter from the same company of solicitors, Berryman Shacklock of Nottingham, who had visited our website at least ten months earlier. Sent as a 'letter of claim in conformity with the Pre-Action Protocol for Defamation' it disputed everything we had published on this website relating to the engineering company whose land now borders the terrace of houses. They demanded that we remove 'libellous' content. Naturally, the denials were all based on the word of the company's managing director - Richard Hayden - and no evidence was supplied to substantiate their claim that our published report was 'a collection of exaggerations and distortions' (as Berryman's put it). Furthermore, they accused our correspondent's husband of criminal damage and causing injury to one of their employees by firing projectiles at him with a catapult. If anything, that was far more defamatory than anything I had published because there was nothing to substantiate their accusations.
If I did not agree to this demand by 4pm on Friday 3rd July 2009 Berryman's threatened to issue proceedings for libel seeking an injunction, damages and costs against me in the High Court.
My understanding of libel is that it refers to published matter that is untrue. On that basis, and based on the evidence I had seen and researched, I considered the content of our article was a fair reflection of the facts. My initial reaction was that, if necessary, I would have to defend the action in the High Court. However, I responded to Berryman's with a list of 19 questions which, if answered, would give their client an opportunity to substantiate their claim that they have acted as responsible neighbours to the occupiers of the 15 domestic residences which lie adjacent to their now expanded yard.
These are the questions I asked:
- Can you assure me that Mr Hayden is not a member of any organisations or associations that also have the Chief Constable of Derbyshire, officers or councillors of the local authority as members?
- What equipment was used to measure sound levels at the premises, who owns the equipment, and how often is the noise level monitored?
- Can you amplify the last sentence of the second paragraph on page 3 of your letter, more specifically explain who was 'completely unconcerned’?
- If the filmed evidence of thick black smoke was, as you claim, from the Environment Agency’s works west of the site, the camera operator would have to film through the walls of several houses. On the basis, therefore, that the only other potential suspect might be the car scrap yard, can you please mark the attached image (car_scrapyard.jpg) to show where a fire might be safely lit bearing in mind that scrapped cars contain lethal volumes of petroleum fuel or vapours.
- The Google Earth images shown on my website clearly indicate that the triangular plot of land was transmuted from a green area to one covered with hardcore which will have been subsequently compacted by the equipment used on it and by the storage of Portacabins. Can you please explain how Hayden could have been so saddened by the demise of one tree, possibly more, that was (were) obviously going to be removed one way or the other before the land was covered with aggregate?
- If local residents were using the plot for fly-tipping, as you suggest, can you please explain how they gained access?
- The Environment Agency report covering the June 2007 flooding clearly states that water did NOT rise from the River Erewash. Flooding was caused by excessive rainwater that could not drain from the land to the rear of the properties in Wentworth Street. Can you therefore explain how the aggregate covering on the triangular plot was not an attributable cause of this flooding?
- Please explain how aggregate sufficiently deep to take the weight of heavy goods vehicles is no less porous than greenery which absorbs water through leaves and roots.
- Exactly what criminal damages were occasioned on Rayden property and where is the proof?
- Exactly how many employees were injured by catapulted missiles? Please provide names and contact details.
- Where were the target employees standing when DC’s husband allegedly pounced with his prehistoric arsenal of weapons?
- Please explain why, with several houses backing onto the disputed land, DC’s husband would have been singled out as the culprit.
- Please provide a copies of written requests to the residents of Wentworth Street to install CCTV equipment that might possibly infringe their privacy. Please supply also the residents’ replies.
- Please advise whether the CCTV camera is fixed or remotely controlled.
- Does an employee monitor the surveillance equipment constantly?
- Please state whether the blocking out system on the camera is physical or electronic.
- Please provide the trading name of the professional security supplier and a contact number.
- If the Information Commissioner stated that the images produced by the surveillance equipment were of such poor quality that identification of any individual would be unlikely, what grounds did the police have for arresting DC’s husband after watching the tape at Rayden’s premises?
- Please provide copies of the records showing work on the CCTV system.
23rd June: I received another letter from Berryman's who refused to answer any of my questions and merely repeated their earlier threats. But this time they brought forward the deadline by a whole week to 26th June. I couldn't possibly meet that deadline and told them so.
25th June: Another letter received from Berryman's demonstrating that solicitors often put a completely different interpretation on the English language than the average person. But solicitors are an arrogant bunch who naturally assume that what they say is gospel and expect everyone to kow-tow to their demands. They don't necessarily let the truth or factual evidence get in the way of satisfying their clients' demands.
I got the impression that they did not want the truth to prevail in this case. They made two statements which were undoubtedly false and, to me, that signified the lengths they were prepared to go to in order to suppress the truth.
They gave me a new deadline which was simply not attainable as I was already fully committed for the following five days. However, at this point I decided to edit the published article so that nothing was said that could be considered to be remotely libellous. Click here to read the revised version.
I felt sure this would only be a temporary solution as I suspected many people were colluding in a conspiracy to cover up the truth. But I was determined not to desert my original correspondent or her husband by backing down to the threats of a man who probably thought he could always buy his way out of trouble. There were many questions that still had to be asked - questions that could affect many other people in a similar position - and I was still certain it was in the public interest that, one way or another, the truth came out.
On 18th August 2009 Richard Hayden initiated legal proceedings through the Royal Courts of Justice in London. After my initial experiences with this court I get the distinct impression that the legal authorities are determined the case will not go before a jury. For this reason, I am continuing this story as a new chapter on a page entitled The Legal Process. I am concerned that the only chance I will get to present my evidence will be to conduct my defence online.
Vigilante
Readers' Comments
The whole concept of defamation proceedings is to "expeditiously" restore damaged reputation at the "earliest" opportunity in which to mitigate the alleged damage.
Richard Hayden has always been, and has admitted to being, aware of the well-publicised allegations prior to
publication on the 'councilanddeveloper' website and thereafter on the website itself.
It took Richard Hayden 33 months to instigate his current legal actions for defamation.
Both defendants have now been waiting a total of 44 weeks for Mr Hayden's formal admittance or denial of the allegations and, if the latter, the facts on which
he wishes to place reliance on in that denial.
Despite Mr Hayden applying for and being granted TWO extensions of time in which to comply with Court directions, no compliance has been forthcoming.
One would have assumed after a total of 44 months from the initial well-publicised allegations that Mr Hayden would have provided some semblance of proof of the "falsity" of the allegations levelled against him. But not one shred of proof or one document has been forthcoming.
In addition Mr Hayden has refused TWO formal attempts at mediation which could have amicably resolved the issues, instead
choosing to bully and threaten co-defendant publishers into retraction.
Mr Hayden should now either (somewhat belatedly) comply with court directions orders in preparation for determination of the issues by trail
in front of a jury or he should file a formal discontinuance notice with the Royal Court of Justice.
What he cannot do is issue threats of dire retribution and then bury his head in the sand
(as is currently the case) and ignore those he has bullied and threatened with ultimatums.
As As Litigants in Person chartering unfamiliar territory, we have complied to the letter with Court directions orders. Mr Hayden with an expensive and well versed legal team at his disposal has not.
We as Litigants in Person are fully prepared and ready for trial, Mr Hayden with an arsenal of legal "tactics" at his disposal is obviously not.
WHY NOT?? When the whole concept of defamation is to restore reputation at the "earliest opportunity" - not some 43 months later.
We are not afraid of the truth and are certainly not afraid to stand and defend the justified allegations contained within the publications complained of!
DC, Ilkeston
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