The Court of Appeal in dismissing the appeal in Canada Goose v Persons Unknown (2020) EWCA Civ 303 has enunciated procedural guidelines applicable to proceedings for interim relief in protestor cases against “Persons Unknown”, at paragraph 82 of the Judgment, as follows:-
“(1) The “persons unknown” defendants in the claim form are, by definition, people who have not been identified at the time of the commencement of the proceedings. If they are known and have been identified, they must be joined as individual defendants to the proceedings. The “persons unknown” defendants must be people who have not been identified but are capable of being identified and served with the proceedings, if necessary by alternative service such as can reasonably be expected to bring the proceedings to their attention. In principle, such persons include both anonymous defendants who are identifiable at the time the proceedings commence but whose names are unknown and also Newcomers, that is to say people who in the future will join the protest and fall within the description of the “persons unknown”.
(2) The “persons unknown” must be defined in the originating process by reference to their conduct which is alleged to be unlawful.
(3) Interim injunctive relief may only be granted if there is a sufficiently real and imminent risk of a tort being committed to justify quia timet relief.
(4) As in the case of the originating process itself, the defendants subject to the interim injunction must be individually named if known and identified or, if not and described as “persons unknown”, must be capable of being identified and served with the order, if necessary by alternative service, the method of which must be set out in the order.
(5) The prohibited acts must correspond to the threatened tort. They may include lawful conduct if, and only to the extent that, there is no other proportionate means of protecting the claimant’s rights.
(6) The terms of the injunction must be sufficiently clear and precise as to enable persons potentially affected to know what they must not do. The prohibited acts must not, therefore, be described in terms of a legal cause of action, such as trespass or harassment or nuisance. They may be defined by reference to the defendant’s intention if that is strictly necessary to correspond to the threatened tort and done in non-technical language which a defendant is capable of understanding and the intention is capable of proof without undue complexity. It is better practice, however, to formulate the injunction without reference to intention if the prohibited tortious act can be described in ordinary language without doing so.
(7) The interim injunction should have clear geographical and temporal limits. It must be time limited because it is an interim and not a final injunction. We shall elaborate this point when addressing Canada Goose’s application for a final injunction on its summary judgment application.”
The Court of Appeal also made observations about final orders against “Persons Unknown”.