Committal for Contempt of Court: Barleycroft Limited -v- Mr Paul Stephen Kennedy           

County CourtCommittal for Contempt of Court

Case Number: J00TR270

Truro Combined Court

12 June 2025

Before:

His Honour Judge Carr

Between:

Barleycroft Limited

-v-

Mr Paul Stephen Kennedy

Order

 His Honour Judge Carr:

  1. This is an application dated 6 August 2024 to commit Paul Kennedy to prison for contempt for breach of an order I made on 10 April 2024. I have counsel in front of me for the Claimant in this case. The Defendant has not attended.
  2. The circumstances of his nonattendance are contained in an email of 11 June 2025 in which he indicates that he is seeking to appeal the refusal of leave to appeal made by the High Court recently and feels that he has been misled by the Court Service at Bristol as to where and in what circumstance he can appeal and therefore there should be a stay while he fully explores his options of appeal back at the High Court.
  3. He has been assisted by the Civil Division Court of Appeal, as they always are helpful, indicating, for reasons that I shall come to in a moment, his routes of appeal to the Court of Appeal have all been exhausted and there is only one avenue in exceptional circumstances he may reopen the order of Bourne J.
  4. Mr Kennedy is an intelligent man, as I have indicated in a number of judgments, and has a keen grasp of civil jurisdiction. He has attended every hearing there has been in this case, save this one. I am perfectly clear that his decision to not attend today is because he knows there is no merits in the applications that he is making and he thinks he can somehow derail the process by not attending.
  5. His email makes it clear that he knows that the order being sought is a committal. He knows the orders that could be made today and he knows he is required here and has given no reasons whatsoever apart from, as I say, a decision to circumvent the legal service by his nonattendance and I propose to proceed in his absence.
  6. The circumstances of this case, for the purposes of the committal, can be taken relatively shortly. Over three days in March I heard a trial where there was a dispute as to the use and ownership of a road which serves both the Claimant’s and Defendant’s property. In very simple terms, the Defendant had bought a plot of land on which he said he had plans for the future but in which he had done no work. It was heavily overgrown and full of discarded material and mechanical devices.
  7. The Claimants, through their director and owner, Mr Taylor, had gained planning permission for three houses at the end of the road in dispute and were having difficulty selling or renting the properties because of the actions of the Defendant both in the threats that he had made to block the road or to dig up the road or by placing items right up against the fence that were an eyesore and clearly intended to deter people from buying or renting the properties in question, as I found in my original judgment.
  8. I gave judgment on 10 April 2024, so some 14 months ago. The committal simply relates to clause 8 of that order. That was a discreet point within the case as a whole whereby, in his conveyance, the Defendant had an obligation to keep clean and tidy an area marked on the map by the letters A, B, C, a triangle of land near to the Claimant’s land and particularly near to where the houses were built.
  9. He accepted in evidence before me that he had not done that, that the place was an eyesore and that he had an obligation to clear it. His only explanation on this particular discreet point was not to say that he did not have an obligation to clear and had failed to comply with that obligation but that the pressure of  proceedings was such that he had decided over the last few years simply not to attend the premises as he felt unable to attend and do any works because of the ongoing litigation. There was, of course, no bar within the litigation from him complying with the order as set out at 8.
  10. Given the fact that he accepted his obligation to clear, given the fact that it had been in place for years and given the effect it was having on the Claimant, as seen in his statements, I gave the Defendant until 14 May 2024 to clear the debris and render the area clear and tidy. On 6 August, some almost three months after it should have been done, this committal application was issued because the works had not been done and, clearly, still have not been done.
  11. On 23 August Mr Kennedy obtained a stay in the High Court pending his appeal of my judgment and therefore the committal application was stayed, in effect, pending the outcome of the appeal. That appeal was heard on paper by Bourne J and dismissed it in its totality. It is right to say, without going through the judgment in detail, Bourne J expressed his views in particularly trenchant terms that there was simply no merit whatsoever in anything Mr Kennedy was arguing.
  12. There were no points of law and it was a claim for appeal marked entirely without merit bringing to an end the appeal process of this case. As a result of that an application was made by the Claimants to the Bristol High Court District Registry to lift the stay and that was done some weeks ago. Then the matter of the committal was relisted in front of me today.
  13. The bundle I have, including the skeleton argument for the Claimants, make it clear that the Defendant was served with all relevant documentation, in other words the original order, the original committal application and the notice of today’s hearing and indeed the email I have referred to makes it clear he is perfectly well aware of the circumstances and what is going on.
  14. The only route said to be open and advised by the Civil Office is that it is potentially possible when a High Court Judge has found an appeal to be entirely without merit on paper that in, what are described as, exceptional circumstances the Judge can be asked to set aside his decision.
  15. Within the letter before me and within any documentation I have seen, Mr Kennedy has singly failed to indicate anything that could amount to exceptional circumstances or indeed any basis on which he proposes to argue exceptional circumstances. There clearly, it seems to me, are none. The judgment of Bourne J could not be clearer. There is no legal or factual basis for challenging my order.
  16. In the email what the Defendant has asked for, although not been prepared to come to court to obtain, is a stay pending his application back at the Bristol District Registry under this very, very narrow exception. Although, of course, it will be entirely a matter for the High Court Judge who considers it, I can see no basis on which it could possibly be granted.
  17. The Claimant has had an order to comply with now for some 16 months. He has waited 15 months from the time when the area should have been cleared. His sale of the three properties is still blighted by the condition of the premises and there is no excuse for Mr Kennedy not having dealt with this part of the order whatever he thought of the merits of the rest, as I say, because this was, effectively, a conceded order in which he accepted he had to do the works and asked for time to complete it.
  18. There is no basis for staying this part of the claim again within these committal proceedings. The authorities as quoted to me, quite rightly, by counsel indicate that in those circumstances a stay will not be appropriate, although one looks at the circumstances of the case, in practical terms, I cannot think of a case less suited to stay than this one has ever come in front of me.
  19. Mr Kennedy needs to comply with the order and not continue to appeal in circumstances which are doing nothing other than increasing the costs of the case. I make it clear that I have well in mind the committal proceedings are required to be found to the criminal standard. Had Mr Kennedy attended I would have given him the option to be represented and to file evidence if he chose to do so. He has chosen, as I say, to absent himself in a way of derailing the proceedings and loses those opportunities.
  20. This is the part of the order that, I repeat again, was not contested. It is over a year since it has been made and he could have performed it and it is blighting the Claimant’s sale of the properties. In such circumstances I have no hesitation in concluding to the criminal standard that Mr Kennedy is in contempt of court for breach of clause 8 of the order of 10 April 2024 and is attempting to sabotage the proceedings to enforce.
  21. I therefore propose to give him one last opportunity. The order of the Court today is that by 11 July 2025, in exactly the same terms as the order of 16 April, he completes the works necessary to clear the debris and remain the premises clean and tidy. His failure so to do so will be met by a suspended prison sentence of 14 days’ imprisonment in the event that he chooses not to comply with the order.
  22. Mr Kennedy has done everything he can to avoid his liability under this judgment, and particularly this section, which he did not even contest, that now comes to an end and I make the order that I have indicated.