The Post Office and Fujitsu have finally filed a defence to former Subpostmaster Lee Castleton’s July 2025 claim against them at the High Court. It is a partial defence in the light of a recent judgment which ordered a split trial approach to the litigation (see here and below).

Lee seeks the opportunity to pursue a claim against the Post Office for abuse of process over their High Court case against him in 2006/7 (Part B) and he wants the 2007 judgment to that case ruled to be obtained by fraud (Part C).

In order to do that, the High Court has to determine either whether he is able to do that notwithstanding the terms of the Bates v Post Office group litigation (GLO) settlement agreement signed on his behalf in 2019 or whether the settlement agreement is invalid on the grounds it was obtained dishonestly (Part A).

On 21 January Mr Justice Trower and Master Kaye ruled that there would be a two week trial to settle Part A. This was explained further in a short judgment handed down on 30 January.

Legal Hurdles

We knew from the hearing on 21 January that both the Post Office and Fujitsu believe the issues in Part A are going to be difficult hurdles for Lee to get over. Now we have their written arguments explaining why.

The Post Office asserts that Lee is bound by the wording of the GLO agreement, legitimately signed on his behalf by Alan Bates and Kay Linnell who formed the GLO steering group. It also says that the wording of the agreement disallows any further legal action other than malicious prosecution, which Lee is not claiming.

There are two potential areas of wiggle room –

i) if Lee did not know the Post Office had engaged in abuse of process when the settlement agreement was signed, can he be free to pursue a claim? And,
ii) even if he can’t on that basis, was the settlement agreement obtained dishonestly, making it invalid?

On point i), Lee’s argument is that whilst he very much disagreed with the 2007 judgment against him, he didn’t know by Dec 2019 it had been obtained by abuse of process. The Post Office argues that the original Bates GLO written particulars of claim actually alleged abuse of process against the Post Office and specifically referred to its 2006/7 legal action against Lee Castleton. The current claim is therefore a repetition of one within the GLO – a “Like” claim, which is expressly disallowed under the terms of the settlement agreement.

The Jenkins Relevancy

On point ii) Lee’s argument is that the whole settlement agreement was obtained dishonestly, because the litigation was conducted fraudulently. The key reason for the fraudulent conduct was the allegedly false information given about the Post Office’s decision not to use Gareth Jenkins as a witness in the Bates litigation.

Lee contends that if Gareth Jenkins was put forward as a witness, the Post Office would be obliged to disclose the Clarke advice, which revealed Jenkins as a tainted witness, despite being used during the criminal prosecution of a number of Subpostmasters, including Seema Misra. If this had became known to the GLO claimants the whole litigation would change course in the Subpostmasters’ favour.

Lee alleges the Post Office deliberately didn’t use Jenkins as a witness to avoid having to disclose the Clarke advice and then lied about why they had done so. This allowed them to obtain a settlement dishonestly. Lee contends the lie is in the paragraph of the Post Office’s written closing submissions which states:

“Post Office was concerned that the Horizon Issues trial could become an investigation of [Jenkins’] role in [Seema Misra’s trial] and other criminal cases. Moreover, Post Office was conscious that if it only adduced first hand evidence in the [Horizon Issues GLO] trial, it would end up having to call more witnesses than could be accommodated within the trial timetable.”

The Post Office says that this statement or “Representation” now has “core immunity from suit” because it was addressed to the court. It therefore fails to be actionable on the basis it was “made as part of an argument in the course of litigation, being an adversarial environment… the Representation was addressed to the court [and] there was no evidence verified by a statement of truth adduced in support of the Representation.”

This appears to be suggesting that even if what the court was told wasn’t true, it didn’t matter because it wasn’t accompanied by a sworn statement of truth, it was all part of the fun, and anyway… you can’t sue someone for “any statement spoken or written in court”, no matter how untrue it is. This turns my understanding of perjury on its head, but I’ve never read Chief Constable of Sussex v XGY [2025] EWCA Civ 1230, which apparently explains this odd state of affairs.

The Post Office also says it had no intention for the Bates claimants “to enter into the Settlement Deed or any settlement agreement in reliance upon the Representation. It is further denied that it would have been reasonable for the Claimant in the Circumstances to rely upon it for the purpose of entering into the Settlement Deed.“

Anyway, the Post Office its statement in Bates wasn’t untrue: “The meaning of that statement, objectively interpreted and with due regard to the circumstances and the context in which it was made, was that the Post Office believed that (i) calling Mr Jenkins [as a witness] would not assist the Post Office in its efforts to successfully defend the GLO action because the Post Office was concerned that Mr Jenkins’ conduct in the Misra trial and other criminal cases could become the subject of scrutiny during the course of his cross-examination which could make him an unfavourable witness for POL; and (ii) calling witnesses in addition to Mr Godeseth [Jenkins effective replacement] would in practice prejudice the trial timetable. It is averred that that meaning was true, or true in all material respects.“

Joint Tortfeasing

As for Fujitsu, they rely on this extraordinary “joint torfeasor” rule. According to current law, when one party in a case like this settles with a claimant, there is no liability on the “joint tortfeasor” whether they had any formal part in proceedings or not.

Fujitsu says that as Lee’s Particulars of Claim allege that Fujitsu “was party to an unlawful means conspiracy with, and therefore that it was jointly (or jointly and severally) liable for the same alleged wrong” as the Post Office, “if any of the claims against the Post Office released in the Settlement Deed included the claims brought in the Particulars of Claim, it follows that the claims against Fujitsu were also thereby released.”

The final point that both Fujitsu and the Post Office make is that rescinding the settlement agreement is not something the court alone can do. The Post Office says:

“The Settlement Deed is a contract between the Post Office, the 555 GLO Claimants, and Freeths LLP. Insofar as the Claimant’s case is that the GLO Claimants were induced to enter into the Settlement Deed by a fraudulent misrepresentation, it is averred [asserted] that any election to rescind the Settlement Deed must be made by all the GLO Claimants jointly. If any of the GLO Claimants do not expressly seek rescission, it is averred that this operates as an effective bar to rescission.“

What next?

As the 30 Jan Trower judgment says, litigating Part A requires working out whether:

• the settlement deed does stop Lee’s claim. Trower says this “is a pure question of construction… the point is self-contained.”
• Fujitsu can be part of this claim. Trower says this is “a pure question of law”.
• Lee can be said to have known that the 2007 judgment against him could have been obtained by abuse of process. Trower says this “involves a discrete and confined inquiry into the Claimant’s knowledge (if any) of the Part B claims and the Part C claims as at the date of the Settlement Deed and the extent to which the Post Office knew of his state of mind.”
• Gareth Jenkins was withheld from the Horizon Issues trial because it meant the Clarke advice would have to be disclosed. Trower says this “involve an inquiry into the reasons why Mr Jenkins was not called as a witness at the Horizon Issues trial to determine the question of whether there was a misrepresentation and whether it was fraudulent.”
• the court has the power to essentially cancel the settlement agreement, something Trower says “is a confined question of law, although it may be that the position taken by those other parties will affect the outcome.”

The two week trial to decide the above will take place before the end of July. If Lee succeeds in being released from the settlement agreement, and is allowed to take on the Post Office and Fujitsu to trial over what happened to him back in 2006/7, Mr Justice Trower thinks issues B) and C) will require a 12 week hearing, which I suspect will take place in the latter half of 2027. I’ll keep keeping an eye on it.

Read (via the link) or download (via the button) the 30 Jan ruling mentioned above:

Read or download the Post Office’s defence to Lee Castleton’s claim:

Read or download Fujitsu’s defence to Lee Castleton’s claim:

Lee Castleton’s claim can be read at the bottom of this blog post.

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