Humiliation for Stephanie Hayden

A judge forces Hayden to drop their case against Adrian Yalland.

In mid-July, I was informed that trans-activist Stephanie Hayden had launched yet another legal action, this time against Adrian Yalland – which (according to Adrian’s calculations) is the 24th such legal action Hayden has brought. Adrian is apparently the 28th person Hayden has sued for harassment, libel or both. Some, like me, Hayden has targeted more than once.

Adrian is someone I came to know because he was giving assistance to three women Hayden was also suing. Bizarrely, in Hayden’s complaint to the court about Adrian, Hayden cited this assistance as an example of how Adrian was “harassing” Hayden. Yes, you have read that correctly – if you assist someone Hayden is suing, you run the risk of being sued by Hayden.

Adrian and I discussed Hayden’s claim, and he was blunt. He described the claim as hopeless and doomed to fail and gave three reasons why.

Firstly, Hayden was relying on the transcript of a leaked group WhatsApp conversation. Hayden then gloated on Twitter about how “Operation Nine Iron” (the name of the group chat) was a transphobic conspiracy to harass Hayden. The group name refers to Hayden having received a previous conviction for assaulting a man with a golf club.

In fact, it was nothing more than a group discussing legal tactics on how to defend claims Hayden had brought, and quite legitimately, sharing publicly available information. Adrian was bemused that Hayden, who identifies as a lawyer, and boasts about being an experienced litigator, had not understood the court would not allow Hayden to admit this transcript into evidence.

Secondly, Adrian told me that even if the court did admit the transcript into evidence, it did not evidence any of Hayden’s claims, mainly that Adrian was posting anonymously harassing and abusive posts about Hayden on the Kiwi Farms website. Adrian told me the allegation was vague, and the evidence (a thousand pages of print-outs from Kiwi Farms) impenetrable, with no way of knowing which allegation related to which piece of “evidence”.

Adrian described the “Particulars of Claim” (a legal document penned to explain the allegations being made) as “a dog’s breakfast”, that even very junior paralegals would have made a better job of drafting, and stated it would be struck-out by the court for not being compliant with court procedures on how these documents are drafted.

Finally, Adrian said that the remaining complaints Hayden was making could not amount to harassment because they were legal and reasonable - things like assisting Hayden’s victims to defend legal actions brought by Hayden, and most interestingly, assisting two businessmen Hayden is accused of defrauding to collate evidence as part of a complaint to the police (which I understand has yet to be made).

Adrian said he had no intention of defending the claim and would instead be applying to have the claim struck-out if Hayden did not accept Adrian’s offer to discontinue the claim.

Adrian wrote a lengthy letter explaining to Hayden why the claim would be struck-out. Predictably, Hayden refused Adrian’s offer to withdraw the claim at no cost to Hayden, describing Adrian’s legal submissions as “nonsense” and “without merit”. Adrian therefore prepared an Application to have the court strike-out the claim, to be heard at the same time as Hayden’s Application for an injunction against Adrian, which was so restrictive, it would never be granted, as it was a blatant attempt to prevent Adrian assisting other people Hayden is suing.

The two Applications were heard on 30 July, and Hayden made submissions for over five hours. Hayden stated Adrian was clearly behind the posts on Kiwi Farms because some were written by someone who “was a lawyer”, was coordinating a campaign of harassment and “involving himself” in Hayden’s life by offering legal advice and support to people Hayden was suing, and seeking to have Hayden prosecuted for fraud.

Hayden asked for the court to injunct Adrian from offering assistance to others, and to order Adrian to stop posting on Kiwi Farms. Hayden argued the leaked WhatsApp conversation proved all this and couldn’t be privileged because it was evidence of illegal activity by Adrian. “The judge apparently interjected at this point, stated he had read the transcript in its entirety, and contrary to Hayden’s position, the conversation was almost certainly privileged, (meaning it would be inadmissible at trial), and in any event did not seem to disclose any harassment and he did not think the claim would succeed at trial.

Adrian then spoke, pointing out contradictions in Hayden’s evidence – not least that Hayden had sued a number of people who had legal training, meaning the posts on Kiwi farms could be any number of people. He also pointed out some of the posts were made at times when Adrian could not have made them (such as when he was sleeping, or in court addressing another High Court judge).

He also pointed out that even if the court was minded to find in Hayden’s favour, Hayden had applied the wrong test for the injunction Application because Hayden had not understood the need to explain why Adrian’s rights under the Human Rights Act should be infringed. Adrian also showed the judge that none of the other things Hayden had accused Adrian of could be harassment, as they were perfectly lawful, legitimate and reasonable, and asked the judge to dismiss Hayden’s application and strike-out the whole claim. Adrian also took the judge to evidence that Adrian had suffered over a year of Hayden’s abuse and harassment on social media and in real-life, such as complaints about Adrian to his Inn of Court (which had been completely dismissed).

It seemed the judge disagreed with Hayden and found for Adrian. The judge made serious criticisms of the legal proceedings, particularly the way the Particulars of Claim and the injunction order were drafted – the injunction sought was so restrictive, no court could ever grant it in the terms Hayden sought, even if the court felt Hayden had a case (which it did not). The judge bluntly told Hayden he would have to provide further evidence before trial on why the WhatsApp conversation was not privileged, or else the judge would rule definitively that it was and would strike-out the whole claim before the matter came to trial.

Furthermore, even if the WhatsApp conversation was allowed into evidence, the Judge said the claim was still highly unlikely to succeed at trial because there was no evidence that Adrian was posting on Kiwi Farms, beyond circumstantial evidence which also “pointed the finger” at three other people. The judge also said in light of Adrian’s evidence, he did not believe Adrian was posting on Kiwi Farms anyway, and as for the rest of Hayden’s claim, it could not be harassment to assist people in defending claims Hayden has brought, or to assist others in collating evidence to support a police complaint against Hayden.

Hayden’s Particulars of Claim and evidence were struck out and the Application for an injunction against Adrian was refused. Hayden was ordered to pay Adrian’s costs of defending the injunction Application. Hayden was also ordered to redraft the Particulars of Claim in accordance with the procedural rules and to file further evidence to challenge the judge’s initial assessment that the WhatsApp conversation was privileged. Hayden failed to do either and at the beginning of September. Adrian applied to have the whole claim struck-out. The court gave Hayden a further 14 days to file new Particulars, or the claim would be struck-out automatically. Just four hours before the claim would have been struck-out, Hayden wrote to the court discontinuing the claim, accepting liability for all of Adrian’s costs.

This episode is a humiliation for Hayden, especially after the bluster and posturing on Twitter in announcing the claim. As Adrian explained to me, Hayden’s problem is two-fold: arrogance and lack of knowledge. Hayden simply fails to understand basic, fundamental and foundational concepts like legal privilege but is too arrogant to accept this when it is pointed out by someone who does. Adrian pointed-out Hayden’s aggressive, pompous tone hides the fact that Hayden has a very narrow knowledge of legal practice, and lacks the formal training that solicitors and barristers have. He said at times, he almost felt sorry for Hayden because he could see the judge was bemused and irritated at Hayden making submissions which were damaging Hayden’s case and credibility – such as raising allegations of fraud which Adrian had already stated he did not intend to speak to, but about which the judge, now given the opportunity by Hayden, grilled Hayden over, causing Hayden to make a statement which Hayden, said Adrian, “may yet come to regret making”.

For some reason, Hayden has not commented publicly on the discontinuance of the claim. This is in stark contrast to Hayden’s hubris in the original Tweet thread which made a series of claims about Adrian which the judge did not accept, specifically that Adrian was involved in “sharing information….on a well -known website of harassment and hate to abuse, harass, and intimidate me.”

Clearly the judge said Adrian was in no way involved in such activity, as has now been seemingly accepted by Hayden.

Anyway, I obviously can’t say much about my case at this stage, but watch this space.

UPDATE:

From Adrian:

1. The judge made no finding of fact on the issue of whether the WhatsApp conversation was legally privileged (although I did ask him to by a later informal Application, which he decided would be inappropriate), but did say his initial assessment having read it, was that it “very strongly suggests” it was privileged, and that if at a later hearing he did determine that it was privileged, the whole claim would be struck-out because of it. Hayden failed to file any further evidence on this point, despite being ordered to do so, and then discontinued the claim rather than have it automatically struck-out (accepting a liability for all of my costs, subject to an assessment of quantum).

2. The judge made no direct finding of fact on whether I had or had not harassed Hayden. But, in order to grant Hayden’s application for an injunction, he would have to have been confident Hayden would ultimately win at trial and establish that I was doing so. Hayden’s application for an injunction was denied, and the judge stated he did not think the claim, if Hayden continued it, would succeed at trial (which speaks for itself – Hayden would not be able to establish the case against me). It was clear to me however, the judge accepted I was not posting on the Kiwi Farms site - I made the point that given the unequivocal denials in my witness statement, it would be career suicide if I was in fact doing so.

3. On the Kiwi Farms point, I have some sympathy with Hayden – I myself have been a victim of that site. But Hayden must bear some responsibility for creating the situation, because Hayden’s conduct is ridiculous, for which Hayden is ridiculed, for which more legal claims are issued, for which Hayden is ridiculed again – and so the cycle continues. As I said in my witness statement, Hayden uses “harassment” as a sword when it was intended as a shield - Hayden was accusing people of harassment long before Hayden changed legal gender and discovered “transphobic harassment”.

4. I pointed the flaws in the claim out to Hayden in a Calderbank Letter and invited him to discontinue the claim. Hayden said my central point about privilege was “nonsense”. Yet the judge repeated the exact same points about privilege to Hayden in court, which Hayden has seemingly now accepted were true all along. Hayden now seeks to portray this as me “hiding behind privilege” but that’s not the case – the judge made it clear that even the bits of the Transcript Hayden took issue with, could not amount to or did not evidence harassment, and the evidence outside the transcript Hayden relied on (such as supporting people who Hayden is suing) wasn’t harassment either. As for Kiwi Farms, the evidence pointed to many other people being behind the posts. As I said, the transcript isn’t a “smoking gun” – it proves nothing except people being sued by Hayden were working together to defend the claims, people who are not obliged to be polite or nice about someone suing them. I don’t suspect for a single minute Hayden is very complimentary about me in private – the difference is I don’t seek to police private conversation and then sue people for finding me objectionable and saying so in private. Hayden shouldn’t therefore be surprised that those alienated by petty law suits and on-line abuse are less than complimentary about Hayden, especially in a conversation they thought Hayden would never see.