This judgment was handed down remotely at 10.30am on 12 May 2025 by circulation to the parties or their representatives by e-mail and by release to the National Archives.
Mr Justice Mellor:
- On 7 March 2025 I heard applications by COPA and SquareUp Europe Limited ('SquareUp') (together 'the Applicants') for civil restraint orders against Dr Wright together with certain other relief. At the conclusion of submissions, I announced my decisions (a) to grant a General Civil Restraint Order ('GCRO') for three years against Dr Wright, (b) to refer the case to the Attorney General and (c) as to the costs of these applications for reasons which I would hand down in writing later. This judgment contains those reasons. Later that day, I made an Order giving effect to those decisions – my Order dated 7 March 2025.
- The applications were issued on 21 November 2024 on the basis that the Court should first determine certain allegations of contempt made against Dr Wright. This occurred in late December 2024 – see [2024] EWHC 3315 (Ch) (my findings on contempt) and [2024] EWHC 3316 (Ch) (sentencing). Accordingly, these applications were listed for early March 2025. They were supported by the 23rd witness statement of Philip Sherrell ('Sherrell 23') of Bird & Bird LLP dated 21 November 2024. Dr Wright filed some further evidence in the contempt proceedings in the form of a witness statement dated 22 November 2024, in which he responded to Sherrell 23.
- At the hearing the Applicants were represented by Mr Hough KC and Mr Moss, instructed by Bird & Bird LLP. I am satisfied that Dr Wright was properly served with the applications and was well aware of them. Shortly before the hearing, Dr Wright sent an email making it clear that he would play no part in the hearing. His email referred to a recent motorbike accident in which he was injured. Whilst I had every sympathy for his predicament, his recent posts on social media demonstrated his recovery was well underway, he was not incapacitated and would have been able to participate in the hearing if he had chosen to do so. He made no application to adjourn the hearing. A remote link was sent to him prior to the hearing but he chose not to appear. In these circumstances, I determined it was appropriate to hear and decide the applications. In what follows I have taken into account the points made in his witness statement dated 22 November 2024 and his other submissions made in the contempt proceedings, to the extent relevant.
- The primary relief sought on each application (dated 21 November 2024) was for a GCRO against Dr Wright, alternatively an Extended Civil Restraint Order ('ECRO'). The Applicants also drew my attention to the discretion to refer the case to the Attorney General so that consideration could be given to an application for a civil proceedings order under s.42(1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981.
Applicable legal principles
- Rule 3.11 of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 and Practice Direction 3C provide for three different levels of civil restraint orders:
i) Limited CRO: This form of order may be granted where a party has made two or more applications which are totally without merit ('TWM'). It restrains the party subject to the order from making any further application in the proceedings in which the order is made without first obtaining the permission of the court: PD 3C, paras. 2.1-2.2.
ii) Extended CRO: This form of order may be made where a party has persistently issued claims or made applications which are TWM. It restrains the party subject to the order from issuing claims or making applications concerning any matter "involving or relating to or touching upon or leading to the proceedings in which the order is made" without first obtaining the permission of the court: PD 3C, paras 3.1-3.2.
iii) General CRO: This form of order may be made where a party has persistently issued claims or made applications which are totally without merit in circumstances where an ECRO would not be sufficient or appropriate. It restrains the party subject to the order from issuing any claim or making any application without first obtaining the permission of the court: PD 3C, paras 4.1-4.2.
- My attention was drawn to the recent general summary of the law on CROs in Achille v Philip Calcutt [2024] EWHC 2169 (KB), Pepperall J. at [4]-[7] and to the following established propositions, all of which I accept.
- An ECRO or GCRO may only be made for a period of up to three years, but it may be extended for incremental further periods of up to three years on application.
- In Nowak v Nursing and Midwifery Council [2013] EWHC 1932 (QB), Leggatt J gave the following explanation for the CRO regime at [58]-[59]:
"[58]…[T]he rationale for the regime of civil restraint orders is that a litigant who makes claims or applications which have absolutely no merit harms the administration of justice by wasting the limited time and resources of the courts. Such claims and applications consume public funds and divert the courts from dealing with cases which have real merit. Litigants who repeatedly make hopeless claims or applications impose costs on others for no good purpose…
[59] It is important to note that a civil restraint order does not prohibit access to the courts. It merely requires a person who has repeatedly made wholly unmeritorious claims or applications to have any new claim or application which falls within the scope of the order reviewed by a judge at the outset to determine whether it should be permitted to proceed. The purpose of a civil restraint order is simply to protect the court's process from abuse, and not to shut out claims or applications which are properly arguable."
- When deciding whether to make a CRO and what form of order to make, there are three questions for the court: (i) whether the litigant has persistently brought claims or applications which are TWM; (ii) whether an objective assessment of the risk demonstrates that the person will issue further abusive claims or applications unless restrained; and (iii) what order is just and proportionate to address the risk identified. See Nowak at [63]-[70]; Camden LBC v Saint Benedict's Land Trust Ltd [2019] EWHC 3576 (Ch) at [44].
- An ECRO or GCRO requires as the gateway condition the individual having persistently brought claims or applications which are TWM. This requires a minimum of three such claims or applications: CFC 26 Ltd v Brown Shipley & Co [2017] 1 WLR 4589; Sartipy v Tigris Industries Inc [2019] 1 WLR 5892 at [28]. There is no limitation on the timeframe for consideration of previous TWM claims or applications: Society of Lloyd's v Noel [2015] 1 WLR 4393; Saint Benedict's at [45].
- A claim or application will be TWM for this purpose if it has been certified as such, and such a certification is conclusive: Crimson Flower Productions Ltd v Glass Slipper Ltd [2020] EWHC 942 (Ch); Achille at [6]. However, a previous claim or application may also be considered TWM for this purpose without a certification having been made, but that requires some consideration of the underlying merits: R (Kumar) v SSCA [2007] 1 WLR 536 at [67]-[69].
- Even if the minimum threshold is met, it does not necessarily satisfy the condition that the individual has "persistently" brought claims or applications which are TWM. That requires an evaluation of the party's overall conduct. It may be easier to decide that there has been persistence if the party seeks repeatedly to relitigate issues than if there are three or more entirely unrelated applications or claims years apart: Sartipy at [30]. The overriding consideration is the "threat level" of continued issue of TWM claims or applications: Re Ludlam [2009] EWHC 2067 (Ch). Thus, the "persistence" element is not solely concerned with the number of claims / applications deemed to be TWM, but also with their nature and substance. A series of TWM claims or applications which demonstrate determined relitigation of issues may raise the "threat level".
- Only claims or applications made by the person can count towards the minimum requirement of three TWM claims / applications: Sartipy at [29]. However, if that threshold is met, bad conduct by a party in a capacity as defendant may be taken into account to demonstrate the necessary persistence for the purposes of seeking an ECRO and/or to demonstrate the need for a GCRO: Sartipy at [31].
- The references in the rules to the target of a CRO application having brought TWM claims or applications extends to situations where the person was not the named party but was the real party standing behind the claimant or applicant: Sartipy at [32]. As Mr Hough KC submitted, that principle is of obvious significance as regards the Tulip Trading action, instigated by Dr Wright.
- Since a GCRO or an ECRO were mooted here, I requested the Applicants to focus in particular on the difference between the two orders.
- The test for making a GCRO rather than an ECRO is that the latter form of order would be insufficient or otherwise inappropriate. In practice, a GCRO covers a situation where a litigant "adopts a scattergun approach to litigation on a number of different grievances without necessarily exhibiting such an obsessive approach to a single topic that [an ECRO] can appropriately be made": Kumar at [60].
- The overriding test is whether a GCRO is necessary (a) to protect litigants from vexatious proceedings against them and/or (b) to protect the finite resources of the Court from vexatious waste. That test is to be applied with regard to the impact of the order on the party to be restrained. See Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset v Gray [2019] EWCA Civ 1675 at [14]; El-Diwany v SRA [2023] EWCA Civ 888 at [63]-[76].
- In Attorney General v Covey [2001] EWCA Civ 254, when addressing the discretion of the Court to grant a civil proceedings order under s.42 of the Senior Courts Act 1981 (i.e. an order with similar effects to a GCRO), Lord Woolf CJ stressed the need to "look at the whole picture" and to consider the cumulative effect of the activities of the person "both against the individuals drawn into the proceedings and the administration of justice generally". To similar effect, in Achille at [8], Pepperall J made the general point that all the circumstances of the case must be considered when determining whether a CRO should be made, of what variant and on what terms:
"Once the threshold question of the repeated (or for the higher level orders, the persistent) making of claims and applications which are totally without merit has been met, the court must of course consider all the circumstances in order to determine whether it should make a civil restraint order at all; whether any such order should be a limited, extended or general civil restraint order; and the terms of the order."
- In the present case, the Applicants submitted that this must include the overall nature and cumulative effects of Dr Wright's litigation to date, including his litigation around the world. I agree.
Dr Wright's litigation
- Although I have overseen much (but not all) of Dr Wright's litigation in this jurisdiction, the Applicants provided me with a helpful summary which I adapted into what follows. It is convenient to relate events in roughly chronological order. I make reference to various of my previous judgments involving Dr Wright which I identify here:
i) The 'Main Judgment' on liability from the COPA Trial, including its Appendix: [2024] EWHC 1198 (Ch).
ii) My 'Relief Judgment' following the COPA trial: [2024] EWHC 1809 (Ch).
- Since late 2015 or early 2016, Dr Wright has made public claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of the Bitcoin system, and as such to have been author of the foundational Bitcoin White Paper and Bitcoin Code. In the following years, he began asserting intellectual property rights associated with the Bitcoin system, including (a) copyright in the Bitcoin White Paper and Bitcoin file format; (b) database rights in the Bitcoin blockchain; and (c) rights in passing off, founded on goodwill in the trade designations "Bitcoin" and "BTC". He made those claims on the grounds that he had invented the Bitcoin system and/or that he had been involved in developing it from its earliest days.
- After a staged public revelation of his claims to have invented Bitcoin failed in mid-2016, Dr Wright adopted the strategy of seeking to vindicate his claims by bringing defamation actions against online commentators who denied that he was Satoshi. That was the start of him seeking to use the English legal system as a weapon against his adversaries and as a means of establishing his claim to have invented Bitcoin. It is apparent that Dr Wright had substantial financial backing from the start of his campaign, and his defamation claims were deliberately unequal battles. As I commented in the Relief Judgment at [99], his defamation claims against Mr Granath and Mr McCormack put each man through five years of personal hell and both those claims were 'part of a deliberate strategy whereby Dr Wright and his backers sought to establish the claim [that Dr Wright was Satoshi] by unequal contests.'
- Dr Wright then began threatening legal proceedings to assert various intellectual property rights which he claimed to own, including accusing COPA members of infringing his copyright by hosting the Bitcoin White Paper.
- COPA brought the COPA Claim in 2021, seeking negative declarations and injunctive relief, because of the threats Dr Wright had made against its members and because those threats were having a serious chilling effect on development and innovation in the cryptocurrency industry. In my Main Judgment I accepted the evidence of Steve Lee of COPA as to that chilling effect.
- After the COPA Claim had been issued, Dr Wright reacted by issuing three other sets of proceedings: (i) Wright v BTC Core: IL-2022-000069 ("the BTC Core Claim"); (ii) Wright v Payward, Inc: IL-2022-000036 ("the Kraken Claim"); and (iii) Wright v Coinbase Global, Inc: IL-2022-000035 ("the Coinbase Claim"). In the BTC Core Claim, Dr Wright asserted ownership of database rights in the Bitcoin Blockchain and copyright in the Bitcoin File Format and White Paper, and alleged infringement of those rights. He also initially made a passing-off claim in relation to the designations "Bitcoin" and "BTC", although that was later dropped. In both the Kraken Claim and the Coinbase Claim, Dr Wright claimed passing-off based on goodwill he claimed to have acquired as a result of both his alleged creation of the Bitcoin system and also his alleged subsequent commercial exploitation and development work.
- The BTC Core Claim was brought against 26 defendants, including a partnership ("BTC Core") which was never established to exist, 14 individuals, 10 companies and COPA. The statements of value in each of the BTC Core Claim, the Kraken Claim and the Coinbase Claim put Dr Wright's claims as being worth "in the hundreds of billions of pounds".
- On 21 July 2023, I ordered a joint trial (the "Joint Trial") to determine whether Dr Wright was the person who created Bitcoin. The trial was to serve as the main trial in the COPA Claim, and as a preliminary issue trial in the BTC Core Claim. The Kraken and Coinbase Claims were stayed, with the parties agreeing to be bound by the result of the Joint Trial.
- At the conclusion of closing submissions in the Joint Trial in February / March 2024, I announced my decision that the evidence was overwhelming that Dr Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto and had not been responsible for the creation of Bitcoin. I made an initial declaratory order to that effect, while leaving further relief over for consideration after I had handed down my judgment containing my full reasons for so declaring. That judgment was handed down on 20 May 2024, in which I found, inter alia, that Dr Wright's claim to have invented Bitcoin was a complete fabrication, his "biggest lie" which he had supported with innumerable other lies and hundreds of elaborately forged documents. I observed at [705] that his claims to have been involved in very early mining of Bitcoin did not ring true and I also found that Dr Wright had called others to lie for him, notably Stefan Matthews and Robert Jenkins.
- Following that judgment, Dr Wright abandoned the BTC Core Claim, Kraken Claim and Coinbase Claim. The former two claims were dismissed, while the latter was discontinued. He took those steps although the Joint Trial had only been a trial of a preliminary issue in those other cases and although some of his claims to intellectual property rights had been based in part on assertions of investment and development after the creation of Bitcoin.
- Following the Joint Trial, a substantial hearing on relief was held. In its skeleton argument for that hearing, COPA explained why a series of anti-suit injunctions and associated orders were justified. The skeleton also noted that Dr Wright's various baseless sets of proceedings could properly justify a GCRO or ECRO being made against him, and it specifically reserved COPA's right to apply for such an order. COPA pointed out in the skeleton that the injunctions it was seeking would have effects distinct from those of a CRO: see Sherrell 23 at [6].
- Following that hearing I handed down the Relief Judgment and made an order dated 16 July 2024 (the "Order") granting a series of injunctions against Dr Wright and his companies which included:
i) at [1], anti-suit orders prohibiting them from commencing or procuring the commencement of proceedings of various kinds ("Precluded Proceedings");
ii) at [2], an order prohibiting them from threatening that Precluded Proceedings would be pursued; and
iii) at [5], a publication order requiring Dr Wright to publish notice of my findings.
- At the relief hearing, Dr Wright did not take issue with the scope of the anti-suit orders (i.e. the scope of Precluded Proceedings). Instead, his counsel specifically told me that Dr Wright and his companies had no intention of threatening or bringing further proceedings within the scope of Precluded Proceedings.
- At that hearing, Dr Wright's Counsel argued that the appropriate regime for addressing vexatious litigation (as COPA was alleging against him) was the CRO regime: see Sherrell 23 at [7]. In response, as I noted above, COPA made it clear at that stage that the injunctive relief sought would work in parallel with the CRO regime and reserved its right to seek a CRO in future.
- At that hearing I considered submissions on whether Dr Wright's claims were to be certified as TWM. In the relief judgment, I concluded that the BTC Core Claim, Kraken Claim and Coinbase Claim were all TWM. I also certified as TWM the Tulip Trading claim which Dr Wright had brought through a company, Tulip Trading Ltd, seeking orders that Bitcoin developers create a hard fork in the blockchain to restore to him a large quantity of Bitcoin which he claimed had been stolen from him by hackers. Finally, I recorded that Dr Wright's defence of the COPA Claim had also been TWM.
Dr Wright's application for permission to appeal
- Since I did not oversee this aspect of the litigation, I relied on Mr Sherrell's account of what occurred, which was amply supported by the documents which he exhibited to his witness statement.
- Dr Wright did not seek permission to appeal from me. However, as was his right, he applied to the Court of Appeal for permission. On 9 August 2024, Dr Wright filed an Appellant's Notice with the Court of Appeal seeking permission to appeal. With it, he filed an 89-page set of grounds and a 413-page skeleton. Dr Wright was now representing himself and acting without the restraint of lawyers and their professional ethics. His appeal documents were highly verbose and repetitious, bearing signs of creation by ChatGPT, and the skeleton was not aligned with the grounds. This required the Civil Appeals Office to direct Dr Wright to produce more concise documents, with the result that Mr Sherrell said that the respondents had to rework their responsive documents.
- Dr Wright's documents contained numerous false references to authority and a series of lies about the underlying proceedings. For example, he falsely asserted that the Court had failed to follow the recommendations of autism experts in adopting special measures for Dr Wright's evidence; that the Court had refused an application to admit expert evidence from Dr Bryant; and that the Court had placed reliance on evidence of some individuals (such as Jameson Lopp) who had not given evidence at all. Dr Wright's appeal documents also included allegations of apparent bias. Alongside his application for permission to appeal, Mr Sherrell said that Dr Wright deluged the Civil Appeals Office with applications to admit fresh evidence, all of which had to be considered and addressed by COPA and the Developers.
- By an order of 28 November 2024, Arnold LJ refused permission to appeal and certified the application as TWM, observing that "the appeals have no prospect of success whatever and there is no other reason to hear them." In his reasons, Arnold LJ remarked on the many falsehoods in Dr Wright's appeal documents and he rejected the allegations of judicial bias. He dismissed the various applications to admit fresh evidence in similarly trenchant terms. The order of Arnold LJ set out the correct procedural position that Dr Wright could not seek further to appeal the decision made.
- On 6 January 2025, Dr Wright sent to Bird & Bird a Petition for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court. It appeared that this had been filed on 19 December 2024. The Applicants' solicitors wrote to the Supreme Court Registry immediately, attaching the order of Arnold LJ and explaining that the Court of Appeal had refused permission to appeal.
- Since Dr Wright had no avenue of appeal to the Supreme Court, Mr Sherrell said that COPA did not file any submissions in response, as to do so would only waste costs and court time. No further direction has been given by the Supreme Court, and nothing has been issued or served.
- Mr Sherrell also noted that these documents, which again bore the stamp of having been written using an AI engine, contained a series of falsehoods, including (a) that the High Court had failed to account for Dr Wright's autism condition; (b) that COPA's expert witnesses had been biased due to financial interests; and (c) that the Court had reversed the burden of proof and/or applied the criminal standard of proof.
The New Claim and the contempt application
- On 10 October 2024, Dr Wright issued under claim no BL-2024-001495 a further claim (the "New Claim"), naming as defendants (i) "BTC Core" (which at least at first sight appeared to be the same fictitious partnership targeted by the original BTC Core Claim) and (ii) SquareUp Europe Ltd ("SquareUp"): see the Claim Form. In the New Claim, Dr Wright claimed over £900 billion based on asserted intellectual property rights relating to the Bitcoin system. COPA's solicitors notified Dr Wright in short order that it considered that he was in breach of the Order and invited him to withdraw the New Claim, an invitation he refused.
- On 23 October 2024, COPA applied to commit Dr Wright for contempt, primarily based on his having brought the New Claim in breach of the anti-suit injunctions in the Order. In response, Dr Wright issued a whole series of applications (summarised in Sherrell 23 at [48]). These included:
i) An application seeking an order for all hearings in the New Claim to be heard remotely, which ran to 185 pages.
ii) An application proposing that various third parties be added to provide evidence for Dr Wright as interveners, which ran to 30 pages.
iii) An application proposing that a "Schedule of Partners" be introduced into the New Claim to identify supposed members of the "BTC Core partnership". This ran to 22 pages and identified 122 corporate entities. The effect of this application was to allege that over 100 companies and a group of Bitcoin developers were partners of "BTC Core" and so defendants to the New Claim. These included those targeted by the original BTC Core Claim, as well as many more. Many of those companies and individuals had not been served and were resident outside the jurisdiction.
iv) An application responding to COPA seeking a stay, which was unnecessary and totalled 224 pages.
v) An application to amend the Particulars of Claim in the New Claim, totalling 89 pages.
- Those applications were all issued between 23 to 25 October 2024, save for the last one, which was issued on 4 November 2024. Much of the documentation had the hallmarks of ChatGPT or a similar AI engine.
- Having read the various applications, I directed a CMC on 1 November 2024. At that hearing, directions were given which included the listing of a further directions hearing and a substantive contempt hearing, as well as a stay of the New Claim. The application to amend the Particulars of Claim, filed on 4 November 2024, was issued by Dr Wright directly after the New Claim had been stayed.
- As Mr Sherrell observed, Dr Wright's habit (since representing himself) when issuing applications has been that he does not serve them at the point of filing. For example, he did not serve the amendment application of 4 November 2024, and Bird & Bird found it on the CE-file by chance: see Sherrell 23 at [50].
- On 6 November 2024, Bird & Bird wrote to Dr Wright, pointing out that he should not be issuing applications in a stayed claim. Dr Wright replied, seeking to defend his conduct on the basis that he had issued but not served the application. COPA's solicitors wrote a letter in response in which they asked him to explain a recent threatening post on X (Twitter), which gave them concern that he planned to issue further Precluded Proceedings. In reply, Dr Wright suggested that he planned a claim against Microsoft in relation to supposed proceeds of crime.
- On 8 November 2024, COPA discovered that a website had been set up to encourage supporters of Dr Wright to issue applications to be joined as additional claimants in the New Claim. This was at the following page: https://metanet.icu/witness-statement/ (the "Metanet Page"). The Metanet Page contained pro-forma documents (application notices and witness statements), and it stated that Dr Wright would be covering applicants' costs and could provide legal counsel.
- Dr Wright later sought to distance himself from the Metanet Page and the "people" responsible for setting up that page. In his Submission dated 22 November 2024 at p31, he claimed that COPA "falsely attribute[d]" the page to him. At the hearing on 27 November 2024, Dr Wright repeated that point (as recorded in the transcript at pp41-42).
- Following those events, COPA and SquareUp issued their applications for a CRO on 21 November 2024. As explained to me at the CMC on 1 November 2024, their intention had previously been to issue such applications after the end of the contempt proceedings, but they had reserved the right to issue them sooner depending on Dr Wright's actions. The fact that Dr Wright then ignored the stay and apparently supported an initiative to join numerous further individuals into the New Claim led COPA and SquareUp to issue their CRO applications without delay.
- On 27 November 2024, I held a directions hearing for the contempt application. At that hearing, I ordered Dr Wright to attend the contempt hearing in person. I gave my reasons for the directions issued at that hearing, in particular for my decision to require personal attendance by Dr Wright, in a judgment handed down on 6 December 2024: [2024] EWHC 3135 (Ch). In that judgment, I also addressed and rejected an allegation of judicial bias which Dr Wright had made in a Submission of 22 November 2024, and which was essentially the same as that he had made previously to the Court of Appeal.
- COPA filed Sherrell Affidavit 3 on 4 December 2024, providing an update on events since the contempt application had been filed. On 11 December 2024, Dr Wright made what he presented as a filing of evidence in response to Sherrell Affidavit 3. However, this was in substance a further request that I recuse myself on grounds of judicial bias. This second application was supported by an affidavit of Gavin Mehl. It was not responsive evidence, and no proper application had been made. Notwithstanding those points, Mr Mehl's Affidavit simply repeated the allegations of apparent bias which I had rejected in my judgment of 6 December 2024 (and which by this stage Arnold LJ had also rejected in his order).
- At the hearing on 18/19 December 2024, I found Dr Wright had committed contempt of court on each of Grounds 1 to 5 alleged by COPA, in that he had breached injunctions in the order of 16 July 2024 by threatening to bring and then issuing the New Claim: see contempt liability judgment at [2024] EWHC 3315 (Ch). I gave him a one-year prison sentence, suspended for two years. I also struck out the New Claim as being an abuse of the process: see contempt sentencing judgment at [2024] EWHC 3316 (Ch).
- In that last judgment (at [73]), I drew attention to the fact that Dr Wright had expressed no remorse and had continued to pursue arguments which could only be described as legal nonsense. I endorsed COPA's submissions that (a) Dr Wright had either intended to breach the injunctions or had at least been reckless as to breaching them; and (b) it was simply too important to him to maintain for his supporters the posture that he would be "unstoppable" and "fight like hell" (see [73], where I accepted the submissions summarised at [27]-[28]. I mention those points because they have obvious significance for the present applications).
Dr Wright's other litigation
- I was previously aware of just some of the litigation brought by Dr Wright in this jurisdiction and in others, but not the full extent which Mr Sherrell outlined in Sherrell 23 from [12] onwards. It suffices to set out the following summary.
- The Kleiman Proceedings (USA): This was a claim arising from Dr Wright's having told the family of his deceased friend, David Kleiman, that he had created Bitcoin in concert with Mr Kleiman. That was a position he denied in the Joint Trial. In any event, Dr Wright's accounts to the Kleiman family led to their bringing a range of claims against him. Following a trial in November / December 2021, the jury found Dr Wright liable to the company W&K Information Defense Research LLC for conversion of intellectual property and awarded damages of US$100 million against him, a sum which Mr Sherrell reported remains unpaid. Although the court in that case did not have to decide whether Dr Wright had been Satoshi, I agree it is clear from the Main Judgment that Dr Wright gave extensive dishonest evidence before the jury in Florida. In addition, at an interlocutory stage of the US proceedings Judge Reinhart found substantial evidence that Dr Wright had lied and produced forged documents in relation to his supposed Bitcoin holdings and addresses.
- The McCormack Proceedings (UK): These were defamation proceedings which Dr Wright brought in 2019 against Peter McCormack, an online commentator, for having published statements that Dr Wright's claim to be Satoshi was dishonest. Mr McCormack originally intended to advance a defence of truth but later could not maintain it because of cost considerations. At trial, the issue concerned the harm Dr Wright had supposedly suffered, and in that regard Chamberlain J. held that Dr Wright had concocted a series of dishonest accounts about supposed loss of conference engagements. As a result, the judge awarded only nominal damages. Following trial, the judge referred Dr Wright for contempt proceedings for breach of a judgment embargo, proceedings which Dr Wright evaded by disputing his responsibility for an account put in by his lawyers. After the Joint Trial in these proceedings, Mr McCormack applied for additional costs as a result of Dr Wright's claim being fundamentally fraudulent, and I made a worldwide freezing order (see [2024] EWHC 1735 (KB)). I was told that COPA understands that that litigation has now been settled. I agree that it follows from my findings in this case that Dr Wright's claim against Mr McCormack was TWM. The same is true of the other six defamation claims brought by Dr Wright which I summarise in the following paragraphs.
- The Buterin Proceedings (UK): In April 2019, Dr Wright brought a defamation claim against Vitalik Buterin, the well-known inventor of the Ethereum cryptocurrency and founder of Bitcoin magazine. The claim is understood to have been abandoned. TWM.
- The Roger Ver Proceedings (UK): In May 2019, Dr Wright issued defamation proceedings against Mr Ver (a longstanding Bitcoin developer and promoter) for having stated that Dr Wright's claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto was dishonest. The claim was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. TWM.
- The Roger Ver Proceedings (Antigua and Barbuda): In 2020, Dr Wright brought equivalent defamation proceedings against Mr Ver in Antigua and Barbuda. TWM.
- The Adam Back Proceedings (UK): In June 2019, Dr Wright filed defamation proceedings in the UK against Dr Back, who is a well-known computer scientist and was Satoshi's first known correspondent. In the Joint Trial Dr Back gave a witness statement and was cross-examined. In the Main Judgment, I accepted the evidence he gave. COPA understands that the proceedings were discontinued, but that does not affect the fact they were TWM.
- The Granath Proceedings (Norway): In March 2019, Dr Wright threatened the online commentator, Magnus Granath, with defamation proceedings on the basis of Mr Granath having described Dr Wright's claim to be Satoshi as dishonest. In May 2019, Mr Granath issued declaratory proceedings in Norway that he was not liable to Dr Wright. Those proceedings went to trial in Oslo in late 2022, with the Court concluding that Mr Granath had no liability. In those proceedings, Dr Wright relied upon a number of documents which I found in the Main Judgment to have been forged. Based on my findings in the Main Judgment, Dr Wright's defence of the Granath proceedings in Norway was without any foundation, and the burden of his evidence was dishonest. TWM.
- The Granath Proceedings (UK): In June 2019, Dr Wright issued defamation proceedings against Mr Granath in the UK. This gave rise to a jurisdictional dispute, which went to the Court of Appeal, followed by a contested summary judgment application on the issue of serious harm. The proceedings took up considerable court time in the UK and were abandoned by Dr Wright after the Main Judgment. TWM.
- The Tulip Trading Proceedings (UK): In 2022, Tulip Trading Ltd, a company beneficially owned by Dr Wright and his family, brought a claim alleging that it had lost the ability to access Bitcoin worth US$4.5 billion as a result of hackers having stolen private keys from Dr Wright's computer and then deleted them. It brought the claim against the Bitcoin Association for BSV (a Swiss Verein) and 15 Bitcoin developers, seeking orders that they re-write or amend the underlying code so as to enable them to access the allegedly stolen Bitcoin. There were many indications that the allegations of Bitcoin ownership were dishonest, and a number of the forged documents deployed by Dr Wright in the Joint Trial were also deployed in the Tulip Trading proceedings. Dr Wright caused those proceedings to be discontinued in April 2024, and I later certified the claim as TWM. COPA submitted that the Tulip Trading claim was of particular significance to the present application, because only a GCRO (not an ECRO) would provide secure protection against a comparable claim being made in future.
- The Cobra Proceedings (UK): This was a copyright infringement claim brought against the anonymous person(s) who operated the website www.bitcoin.org. Dr Wright claimed that he owned copyright in the Bitcoin White Paper and that had been infringed by the paper being hosted on the website. Because the person(s) targeted by the claim were not prepared to relinquish their anonymity, Dr Wright obtained default judgment. In my Relief Judgment, I set aside the default judgment as having been obtained by fraud, since the claim was fraudulent. It follows that this claim too was TWM.
- COPA also submitted that Dr Wright has repeatedly used cynical tactics in his litigation, including: bringing defamation claims (where the defendant bears the burden of proving truth) against poorly-resourced opponents and deluging them with documents; bringing the Tulip Trading proceedings against a "friendly" defendant (Bitcoin Association for BSV) to obtain an uncontested judgment; bringing the Cobra claim against an anonymous operator to obtain a default judgment. I can only agree.
Dr Wright's applications
- As well as having issued a large number of claims which were TWM, in each set of proceedings Dr Wright has issued large numbers of applications. These included 12 applications in the COPA Claim up to and during trial, five applications in the appeal, five applications in the New Claim and seven applications in the Tulip Trading proceedings. The Applicants contended that these applications attest to Dr Wright's aggressive conduct of litigation and show how future claims by him could likewise consume substantial court resources. As well as being in support of claims which were substantively TWM, a number of these applications themselves can now be seen to have been for the purpose of deploying dishonest evidence (e.g. the application of 1 December 2023 to adduce the BDO Drive documents and the White Paper LaTeX files – all forged) - see Sherrell 23 at [38].
- The Applicants also point to Dr Wright's recent propensity for filing but not serving applications and other documents. Further details are given at Sherrell 23 at [40]. As the Applicants contended, this practice is of some significance for the present application, because a CRO provides protection even where the target of a claim or application has not been properly served.
Dr Wright's threats to continue litigation after the Joint Trial
- Dr Wright made it clear during cross-examination at the Joint Trial that he would seek to bring new types of claim if he was found not to be Satoshi Nakamoto. He mentioned two types of claim:
i) First, he said that he would want to bring an extended passing-off claim (a "Champagne case"), which he said would not depend on his claim to be Satoshi. In this regard, I note that Dr Wright could have attempted to plead a claim for extended passing off in the Coinbase and Kraken claims, but did not do so, instead abandoning both claims as well as the BTC Core claim.
ii) Second, he also said that, if he lost the COPA Claim, he would then move on to patent litigation in the UK, EU and USA. He said that "there are approximately 80 patent cases already in waiting" and boasted that he would "keep doing this, and no matter what the outcome of this [COPA] case is, I'll hit 10,000 patents and then I'll keep going". See Sherrell 23 at [66]-[71].
- Dr Wright's abandonment of the BTC Core, Coinbase, Kraken and Tulip Trading Claims and his agreement to the scope of the anti-suit injunctions may have been because he no longer had financial backing for those cases. However, less than three months after the injunctive orders of 16 July 2024, he threatened and then issued the New Claim. In the days after commencing those proceedings, he issued a series of tweets asserting his determination to fight to the end. See Sherrell 23 at [47].
- Dr Wright's threat to bring proceedings for infringement of numerous patents requires separate consideration. None of these claims would depend on his claim to be Satoshi. Instead, any patent enforceable in the UK would necessarily have been granted after examination by either the UKIPO or the EPO and is prima facie valid. Provided an arguable case of infringement relating to acts done in the UK was demonstrated in the Particulars of Infringement and provided Dr Wright was the or a registered proprietor of the patent, he would be entitled to enforce it in the UK. If the claim was properly formulated, this would be an example of proceedings which a Judge administering a CRO would readily allow to go forward (cf Nowak at [59]). There are perhaps three final points to note: first, there is the possibility that Dr Wright could bring a claim for patent infringement via a company he owned (cf the Tulip Trading Claim); second, that I understood from his evidence that the patents to which Dr Wright referred at the Joint Trial were likely to be owned by nChain, a company with which he is likely to have severed all connections; third, that if Dr Wright brought a claim for patent infringement in the UK, either himself or via a company, and he maintained his current concealment of his whereabouts outside the jurisdiction, if the claim was permitted to proceed under the GCRO, the Court would be likely immediately to require a substantial sum to be paid into court by way of security for costs.
Recent developments
- In the months leading up to the hearing, Dr Wright made a number of other significant posts on social media, which were collected together in the evidence. It suffices to mention the following:
i) Five sets of posts from 14 to 17 September 2024 accusing Shoosmiths (the solicitors who acted for him in the lead up to and during the Joint Trial) of misconduct in having unspecified communications about his case with third parties. The Applicants contended these posts are significant, because they reveal the possibility of Dr Wright bringing claims against his former lawyers in an effort to refight past battles while trying to circumvent the injunctions.
ii) Two sets of posts from 12 October 2024 in which Dr Wright published his assertion of there being a BTC Core partnership which he could sue as a means of bringing numerous developers into litigation. His past use of such partnerships indicates that if he sues this type of alleged partnership again, it is likely to be an abuse of process unless he is able to provide adequate particulars that the partnership actually exists.
iii) Two sets of posts and further messages on his Slack channel (17 to 22 October 2024) asserting the merits of the New Claim and alleging that he could seek default judgment against Bitcoin developers who he thought were partners in BTC Core.
iv) A set of posts of 24 October 2024 about the appeal he was pursuing against the Order following the Main Judgment and about his intention to seek a stay of enforcement on the orders which he claimed unfairly punished him.
v) Two sets of posts of 7 November 2024 alleging that BTC Core developers were distorting the system and saying that "their presence in the Bitcoin ecosystem will be eradicated" and that they would be "defenestrated" from the system.
vi) A set of posts of 13 November 2024 claiming that his lawyers at the Joint Trial had failed to consider and deploy evidence (a supposed further historical CV).
vii) A post of 11 December 2024 alleging that lawyers in the modern world were not serving the law and that the lawyers standing against him were the "foot soldiers of greed".
viii) A post of 22 December 2024 (days after the contempt judgment), responding to a post accusing him of running from the UK to avoid sentence, in which he insisted: "Still fighting. Just, not stupid".
ix) A set of posts of 8 January 2025, in which he spoke (in a grandiloquent fashion) about his 'mission' and stated that he would "keep coming back".
The Application for a CRO
- I can now apply the relevant principles to the facts here and I address the three requirements in turn.
First consideration: whether Dr Wright has persistently brought claims or applications which are TWM.
- Dr Wright has issued substantially more than the threshold level of three claims or applications which were TWM.
i) As set out above, he has issued four sets of proceedings which I certified as TWM (the BTC Core Claim, the Coinbase Claim, the Kraken Claim, the Tulip Trading Claim).
ii) His appeal application to the Court of Appeal was likewise certified as TWM by Arnold LJ, and I agree that his application to the Supreme Court must be considered TWM (both substantively and procedurally).
iii) The Applicants also relied on four further sets of proceedings in this jurisdiction which I have accepted must be characterised as TWM, namely, the proceedings against Mr McCormack, Mr Granath and Cobra, as well as the New Claim.
iv) I also certified his defence of the COPA Claim (a claim provoked by his threats) as TWM.
v) I was invited to say that Dr Wright's claim against Mr Ver in Antigua was without merit and that his defence of the Granath proceedings in Norway was similarly baseless. Since both were based on his dishonest claim to be Satoshi, I agree that both were TWM
vi) Similarly, the Applicants submitted that it is very likely that his claims against Mr Buterin and Dr Back in this jurisdiction were TWM.
vii) Many of his applications in the various proceedings may also now be seen to have been TWM, as set out above. Furthermore, I agree that even the applications which were procedurally valid were in support of substantively dishonest claims.
- The Applicants also drew my attention to a series of features of these claims which they submitted aggravate the seriousness of Dr Wright's conduct. These sets of proceedings included:
i) claims against large numbers of individuals and companies (in some instances, without their even being named as formal parties to the proceedings).
ii) claims repeatedly targeting the same individuals and companies across multiple proceedings (in particular, the targeting of the same developers by the BTC Core Claim, the New Claim and the Tulip Trading proceedings).
iii) claims with extremely high pleaded values, which would have been financially ruinous to their targets. In this regard, I note that Dr Wright has claimed to have issued the two largest claims ever in the English courts.
iv) claims targeting individuals who lacked the financial means to pay for defence of large-scale litigation.
v) a claim against an entity he knew would not be able to defend itself without giving up its long-preserved anonymity (Cobra).
- As I mentioned above, I have previously observed Dr Wright's targeting of individuals and other parties without the means or ability properly to defend themselves was "a deliberate strategy whereby Dr Wright and his backers sought to establish [his claim to be Satoshi] by unequal contests". Mr Ayre tweeted that the commentators Dr Wright was suing in defamation would "bankrupt themselves trying to prove a negative". It would appear that Dr Wright deliberately deployed many more reliance documents in his claim against Mr McCormack than in the COPA Claim, no doubt knowing that this would impose an unsustainable financial burden. This strategy had the desired effect when Mr McCormack was forced to abandon his truth defence because he could not afford to maintain it. Similarly, Dr Wright's claim against Cobra revealed a deliberate strategy to obtain default judgment and a propaganda victory against opponents who could not engage in the proceedings to defend themselves.
- If COPA had not pursued the COPA Claim, I agree it is likely that Dr Wright would have continued with this strategy of suing weaker targets. He only brought his claims against more substantial companies and better-resourced individuals after the COPA Claim had been issued and apparently as a reaction to it. If COPA had not intervened, the defamation proceedings which he had issued (and potentially further similar actions) would have caused even more distress and costs to those he was targeting. In this regard, I was reminded of the testimony of Mr Granath and Mr McCormack to which I referred in the Relief Judgment at [99]-[102].
- Mr Ayre's tweet of 13 April 2019, which was put in evidence in the Joint Trial and which I cited in the relief judgment at [99], boasted of the strategy: "judge only needs one troll to pass judgment… no need to sue everyone… just waiting for a volunteer to bankrupt themselves trying to prove a negative."
- In McCormack, Dr Wright provided 1,618 documents positively to support his claim to be Satoshi (relief judgment at [100]). In the COPA Claim, his original set of reliance documents was 100 in total. The Applicants submitted that if Dr Wright pursues a similar litigation strategy again, there may not be an entity like COPA to stand up to him and pointed out that that is one reason why a CRO would provide an important protection.
- When drawing the threads together on this first consideration, the Applicants made two overarching submissions:
i) First, that whilst every application for a CRO has to be considered on its own merits, it is difficult to find a precedent in the reported cases for an abusive campaign of litigation on the scale and with the harmful consequences of that perpetrated by Dr Wright. He has issued many sets of proceedings across many jurisdictions, based on extraordinarily complex lies and forgeries, seeking to weaponise legal systems against the many he perceives as his opponents. He has yet to take no for an answer.
ii) Second, that on any view, Dr Wright has persistently brought claims which are TWM. The complexity and scale of these claims can be gathered from the associated costs, which have been enormous. The Applicants submitted that the legal costs recovered by his opponents in the litigation described above may be conservatively estimated at £10 million, a figure which of course does not include the costs spent on his own large and changing legal teams. So, while there may be some other vexatious litigants who have issued a larger number of claims or applications which have been found to be TWM, Dr Wright's conduct stands apart when one considers its scale and effects on innocent victims and the court service.
- I was and am left in no doubt that this first consideration is more than amply satisfied.
Second consideration: the risk of further baseless claims or applications
- The second consideration requires an objective assessment of the risk of Dr Wright issuing further claims or applications which are TWM unless he is restrained by an appropriate form of CRO.
- As I have already set out above, Dr Wright's previous conduct has involved pursuit of a large number of baseless claims over a period of years. There is no evidence that he has had a Damascene conversion and will retreat into obscurity. He has shown no remorse, and his conduct over recent months demonstrates continuing and brazen abuse of the Court's process (e.g. his repeated attempts to revive the same hopeless allegation of judicial bias and his other conduct during the contempt proceedings). This of itself suggests a significant risk of further abusive claims being pursued.
- In addition, a review of the history shows that Dr Wright has repeatedly returned to litigation as a means to terrorise perceived opponents, which again indicates a high level of risk of future abusive litigation:
i) After his "big reveal" as Satoshi Nakamoto failed, he turned to defamation claims against individuals of limited means in an effort to prove his claim.
ii) He then turned to claims asserting intellectual property rights (initially against Cobra) and to the Tulip Trading claim.
iii) After his loss of the Joint Trial and his forced abandonment of his intellectual property claims, he tried to recast those claims by means of the New Claim.
iv) After his pursuit of that claim was challenged as abusive, he tried to salvage it by hopeless amendments, while he and his allies put up the Metanet Page to encourage some sort of collective action.
v) More recently, he has indicated an intention to bring a claim against Microsoft and hinted at potential action against his former lawyers.
- In light of that history, the Applicants submitted that it is impossible to say to what form of baseless claim Dr Wright may turn next. There is also no way of knowing what costs have been incurred by third parties in looking into the claims he has made and threatened to make.
- A further point suggesting a high risk of Dr Wright issuing future meritless claims is that he has advertised his determination to fight and keep fighting, plainly in an effort to retain his position among supporters. As set out above, he boasted at the Joint Trial that he would seek to revive his passing-off claim (a threat on which he later followed through) and to continue his fight by means of myriad patents which he claims to own or control. Claims of the latter kind, presumably relating to forms of blockchain technology, would not necessarily be precluded by the COPA injunctive orders and may have a significant chilling effect on innovation in an emerging technology.
- Not only do Dr Wright's boasts to his acolytes speak of his willingness to return to the fray; they are also likely to continue to motivate him to keep pursuing even hopeless actions, in an attempt to retain their interest and support. For example, he has posted about the Supreme Court appeal application he has issued, even though he must know from reading the order of Arnold LJ that such an application was impossible and/or hopeless. All the evidence suggests that he is unlikely to desist from eye-catching legal actions in future, as to do so would mean humiliation or irrelevance.
- Finally, under this heading, the Applicants pointed to Dr Wright's consistent contempt for court rules and process and submitted that this propensity added to the likelihood of his bringing abusive claims in future. The examples of this disrespect are too numerous to list, but they include the following:
i) his persistent perjury and forgery, which was maintained in the face of the clearest evidence (often accompanied with wild allegations of hacking and conspiracies – see for instance the saga of the MYOB Ontier Email addressed in the Main Judgment appendix at Section 40);
ii) his willingness to cast blame wrongly on his lawyers, while using reference to privileged communications as a means of seeking to divert questioning (see Main Judgment at [135]);
iii) the lies he told in his appeal documents about what had happened in the Joint Trial (notably in relation to the Court's supposedly having departed from the adjustments agreed for Dr Wright's ASD condition and it having supposedly rejected expert evidence applications made on his behalf);
iv) his citation of non-existent authorities and misrepresentation of authorities in the appeal and the New Claim (as remarked on both by Arnold LJ and myself), and his repeated use of AI to produce prolix documents full of legal errors (e.g. his very lengthy submissions about the doctrine of promissory estoppel which I characterised as legal nonsense);
v) his repeated and unjustified allegations of judicial bias, which he sought to resurrect through the affidavit of Mr Mehl; and
vi) his breaches of court orders, including most recently his failure to attend the contempt hearing (for which his excuse was implausible).
- I agree that there remains a very significant risk that Dr Wright will pursue more abusive claims in the future. He pursues these claims not just to enrich himself but with a view to reinforcing his status amongst his supporters and it is apparent that neither he nor his supporters take 'no' as the answer, even after the Court has examined and weighed all the evidence.
Third consideration: justice and proportionality
- The third consideration is whether a CRO would be just and proportionate to address the risk posed by Dr Wright. The Applicants submitted that there are a series of reasons why such an order is an appropriate response.
- Dr Wright's actions have subjected a wide range of people and businesses to distress, inconvenience and cost. As set out above, in this jurisdiction alone his opponents have had to incur costs of at least £10 million. In addition, there has been the human cost to individuals such as Mr McCormack, Mr Granath and the Developers of being named as defendants to vast and complex claims. Absent a CRO being granted, the Applicants submitted that Dr Wright would have free rein to cause distress and trouble to his perceived opponents through legal proceedings, and they in their turn will need to incur the cost of legal advice every time he does so.
- Furthermore, the Applicants pointed to Dr Wright's conduct which has generally involved very large claims being pursued on the basis of diverse and/or novel legal grounds. They have often been based on elaborate factual stories and accounts which cannot be resolved by examining a limited number of documents. This approach has allowed him to defeat strike-out / summary judgment applications in cases such as the Tulip Trading Claim and the Granath (UK) proceedings. It is likely that his approach represents a deliberate tactic of seeking to avoid early dismissal of his claims.
- Another point relevant to justice and proportionality is that Dr Wright has repeatedly targeted the same people and businesses, compounding the harmful effects on them. His obsessive hostilities may well drive him to continue persecuting the same persons.
- Dr Wright's actions have not only affected the individuals he has sued. They have also caused significant disruption to innovation in an important technology industry, as recounted in the evidence of Steve Lee at trial (evidence which I fully accepted in the main judgment at [251]). Even the prospect of having to incur the cost of taking advice and striking out claims is liable to continue the "chilling effect". Individuals and small companies will understandably not want to run the risk of facing claims from Dr Wright (accompanied by his habitually vitriolic online abuse).
- Dr Wright's actions have taken up far too much court time and resources already. By the end of the Joint Trial, the Applicants calculated that at least 86 days in court had been taken up with Dr Wright's litigation in this jurisdiction (not including judicial pre-reading, judgment-writing, etc.) and that, by the hearing of these applications, the total must have been approaching 100 days. This has delayed justice for other court users, as set out in Sherrell 23 at [73]-[74]. A CRO will enable the court to police Dr Wright's claims by an efficient process, to prevent unnecessary use of such resources. It is also a fair and proportionate way to ensure that the burdens of stopping his misconduct do not always fall on the same parties (such as COPA or the Developers).
- The Applicants also submitted that a CRO would also materially add to, and complement, the effects of the injunctions granted in July 2024, for the following reasons:
i) A CRO will protect all potential defendants against baseless claims, not only giving protection where COPA or others entitled to enforce the injunctions have the will, incentive and resources to do so.
ii) A CRO will save all potential targets of Dr Wright's future claims from having to incur the cost of striking them out and will save COPA and the Developers the cost of enforcing the injunctions. Those parties may also, at some point, decide that enough money, time and resources have been expended on Dr Wright, and nobody could blame them if they did.
iii) A CRO will save court resources, since baseless claims can be stopped by a simpler process than full contempt proceedings and/or a contested strike-out application.
iv) In making a GCRO, the Court will have the capability to forestall a wider range of potential baseless claims than the injunctions could capture.
- The final point made by the Applicants was that, on any view, Dr Wright is a sophisticated litigant with substantial legal experience. If he has valid claims which would not be abusive, it would not be difficult for him to explain that in an application to the court. He has also repeatedly made use of law firms of the highest calibre, showing that he can seek expert representation when he needs it. As Leggatt J pointed out in Nowak (see the quote in [8] above), a CRO will not deny Dr Wright access to the court.
Conclusion on the CRO Application.
- As has been the case throughout this litigation, the submissions made by COPA (and, in this instance, by SquareUp as well) were measured and appropriate. I was and am in the fortunate position of being able to accept all of the submissions which I have set out above. The evidence before the Court was, once again, overwhelming: all three considerations pointed overwhelmingly in favour of the grant of a GCRO against Dr Wright. In particular, in view of what I have set out above, I was completely satisfied that an ECRO would not provide adequate protection and would be an insufficient response to Dr Wright's conduct, with the result that I concluded that a GCRO was warranted and appropriate. The GCRO will remain in effect for three years, until 7 March 2028. Pursuant to CPR Practice Direction 3C, paragraph 4.10, COPA and SquareUp have the ability to apply to extend it upon notice to Dr Wright.
Reference to the Attorney General
- The Applicants also invited me to exercise the power to refer Dr Wright's conduct to the Attorney General for consideration as to an application being made for a civil proceedings order under s.42(1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981. A civil proceedings order is defined in s.42(1A) as an order that:
'(a) no civil proceedings shall without the leave of the High Court be instituted in any court by the person against whom the order is made;
(b) any civil proceedings instituted by him in any court before the making of the order shall not be continued by him without the leave of the High Court; and
(c) no application (other than one for leave under this section) shall be made by him, in any civil proceedings instituted in any court by any person, without the leave of the High Court;'
- Thus, a civil proceedings order provides even broader protection than a GCRO. Before such an order can be made, the High Court must be satisfied that a 'person has habitually and persistently and without any reasonable ground (a) instituted vexatious civil proceedings …. whether against the same person or against different persons; or (b) made vexatious applications in any civil proceedings…'.
- I did not and do not pre-empt any decision which the Court may make on such an application. Suffice to say that the facts I have summarised in this judgment in my view were more than sufficient to persuade me to refer Dr Wright's conduct to the Attorney General and I so ordered in my Order dated 7 March 2025.
Costs
- In my Order dated 7 March 2025, I also ordered Dr Wright to pay the Applicants' costs of these applications on the indemnity basis.
- At the hearing I reviewed two schedules of costs, one for COPA and one for SquareUp, each containing half of the total costs of Bird & Bird and Counsel. Due to the hearing only lasting a short time in Court, the totals presented in those Schedules were revised down so that each Schedule yielded a total of £59, 534. I summarily assessed each Schedule at £50,000 so the Order contained a provision that Dr Wright must pay a total of £100,000 to the Applicants' solicitors within 14 days.
