My Client: Tracey Curtis-Taylor
Introduction
1. I am a barrister at Matrix Chambers specialising in media and information law, including the
law of internet-related harassment and data protection. I write to you on behalf of Tracey Curtis-Taylor.
2. As you are aware, Ms Curtis-Taylor is an aviator and adventurer. In 2013 she flew nearly
10,000 miles in a 1942 open cockpit Boeing Stearman, the Spirit of Artemis, from Cape
Town to Goodwood. The flight was inspired by and in tribute to Lady Mary Heath, the first
person to fly solo from the Cape to the UK in 1928. In late 2015/early 2016 she flew from
the UK to Australia, inspired by Amy Johnson’s epic solo flight in 1930. Further information
is available on her website at
www.birdinabiplane.com.
3. As a result of her flying endeavours, Ms Curtis-Taylor has received the Light Aircraft
Association’s Woodhams Trophy in November 2014, the Air League Framed Address in
May 2014 and 2016, and is to receive to the Honourable Company of Air Pilots Master’s
Medal later this year.
4. The purpose of this letter is:
a. to put you on notice of my client’s claims for misuse of private information,
harassment and breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 against you arising
principally from postings made by you under the pseudonym “Jay Sata” from about
April 2016 and continuing to date on the Professional Pilots Rumour Network
(“PPRuNe”) at
www.pprune.org (although she also understands that you have made
similar statements elsewhere, including via email and to the media); and
b. to request that you take such steps as are necessary to remove the posts
complained of, to desist from harassing my client and to cease processing her
personal data with immediate effect.
In the event that you do not comply with the requests made in this letter, you will leave
my client no option but to consider legal proceedings against you in order to vindicate
her rights, including but not limited to seeking interim injunctive relief against you.
Matters complained of
5. As noted above, my client’s complaints arise principally from posts made by you under the
pseudonym Jay Sata on the PPRuNe forum, specifically at
www.pprune.org/privateflying/[/url]
579030-tracey-curtis-taylor-merged-threads.html, being a public forum thread you
started on 14 April 2016.
6. It appears that since creating the thread you have made in excess of 378 posts to it. I also
note that on 31 May 2016, in a post timed at 20.22, you claimed that the thread had had
over 22,000 views. It is therefore apparent that your posts have reached a very substantial
number of people.
7. The general theme of your posts is to allege that Ms Curtis-Taylor has deliberately and
dishonestly sought to mislead sponsors, the flying community, the media and the public as
to the manner in which the flights referred to above, specifically, that she has repeatedly
misrepresented that all legs of these flights were undertaken alone and without support.
You also accuse her deliberately concealing the true state of affairs, by way of example, in
the way that the documentary about her Africa flight was presented. You also accuse her of
having obtained the awards referred to above on a false basis, namely, as a result of her
dishonest representations that she undertook the flights alone.
8. These allegations are untrue. Ms Curtis-Taylor has never sought to mislead anyone about
the way that her flights were undertaken. By way of example, this is immediately apparent,
from watching the documentary made about her 2013 flight. Whenever she is interviewed
in it, she repeatedly refers to “we”, “we’re”, “everyone” and “everybody”. In a number of
shots, it is obvious that there is someone sitting in the cockpit in front of her. Finally, the
DVD extras feature short films in which others are flying with her. When it has come to her
attention that certain statements made on her behalf, eg on her website, may be
misinterpreted, she has taken prompt steps to correct them. Further, none of the awards
referred to above were given to Ms Curtis-Taylor on the basis that her flights were
undertaken alone.
c. You were a source for the Daily Mail article published on 2 July 2016 which
repeated many of the claims made by you in the forum.
d. At 09.95 on 19 September 2016 you emailed Mr Robson the Royal Navy Royal
Marines Charity raising an objection to her involvement with the charity (and making
specific reference to the fat that she was a guest speaker at a dinner two months
earlier) on the basis of her alleged deceptions and citing the content of the PPRuNe
forum, and the Daily Mail article, as evidence in support. In doing so, you omitted to
inform Mr Robson of the facts that you are Jay Sata, the source of the majority of
the material on the forum, and that you were a source of the Daily Mail article.
e. You are responsible for repeatedly editing Ms Curtis-Taylor’s Wikipedia entry to
make reference to the false accusations referred to above.
11. In the event that it becomes necessary to do so, Ms Curtis-Taylor will rely on these and any
other communications that come to her attention in support of her claims against you.
12. Ms Curtis-Taylor is aware that, in pursuing the course of conduct outlined above, you have
been acting in pursuance of a joint enterprise with Mr Sam Rutherford. Accordingly I have
today written to Mr Rutherford to put him on notice of Ms Curtis-Taylor’s claims against him.
Legal Claims Arising
13. Your activities give rise to a number of legal claims against you as follows:
(a) For harassment, contrary to section 1(1) of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997;
(b) For the tort of misuse of private information; and
(c) For breach of statutory duty, contrary to section 4(4) of the Data Protection Act 1998.
I set out in more detail the basis of each of these claims in turn below.
Protection from Harassment Act 1997
14. Under s.1(1) of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (“the PHA”) a person must not
pursue a course of conduct:
(a) which amounts to harassment of another; and
(b) which he or she knows or ought to know amounts to harassment of another.
15. A person whose course of conduct is in question ought to know that it amounts to
harassment if a reasonable person in possession of the same information would think the
course of conduct amounted to harassment of another.
16. References to harassment include alarming the person or causing the person distress
s.7(2), and “conduct” includes speech s.7(4).
17. A claim for harassment may be defended if the course of conduct is pursued for the
purpose of preventing or detecting crime or if, in the particular circumstances the pursuit of
the course of conduct is reasonable. However, the test of a person’s purpose is not wholly
subjective. He or she must have thought rationally about the material suggesting the
possibility of criminality and formed the view that the conduct said to constitute harassment
was appropriate for the purpose of preventing or detecting it. The test of rationality imports
a requirement of good faith and an absence of capriciousness – see Hayes v Willoughby
[2013] 1 WLR 935 (at [13] to [17]). The test as to whether or not pursuit of a course of
conduct is reasonable is therefore an objective one.
18. Accordingly, the relevant questions are:
(
Ms Curtis-Taylor and encouraged you to identify yourself.
(c) At 13.01 that day “bose-x” described your conduct towards Ms Curtis-Taylor as
a “vigilante campaign”. At 16.16 bose-x also stated that “whatever we think of
the woman we do not have the right to invade her privacy or stir up internet hate
campaigns”.
(d) Also on 8 June at 21.30, DaveW pointed out that you were making the same
points, over and over again in a short period of time, and described your conduct
as “a repetitive scattergun witch-hunt”.
20. Further, in light of the above, you were, from at least early June 2016, in possession of
information which would lead a reasonable person to think that his course of conduct
amounted to harassment. You were being told this in plain terms by other forum members.
Further, and in any event, you were aware that many of the claims you were making
against Ms Curtis-Taylor were based on an extremely selective analysis of the “evidence”
that you presented against her, not least because another member of the forum, “Flying
Lawyer”, kept pointing this out to you.
21. In light of the above, you would have no defence to a claim for harassment against you. In
this regard, I draw your attention to Brand v Berki [2014] EWHC 2979. In that case, the
defendant alleged that the claimants had assaulted her and complained to the police.
Thereafter, she emailed journalists, politicians and others alleging the claimants had
committed a number of very serious criminal offences. She also made allegations on a
website, publicised via her Twitter account. The defendant claimed that she was not
harassing the claimants at all but exercising her right to reveal serious matters, and that her
rights were being thwarted by police inaction and failure. In 2015, Mr Justice Jay granted
summary judgment against her: [2015] EWHC 3373.
22. In QRS v Beach, [2014] EWHC 3057 the claimant, a partner and chairman of a law firm,
brought the action on behalf of himself and in a representative capacity for others in the
firm to prevent the Defendants from posting defamatory statements on websites which
alleged corruption, failure to act in their client’s interests and untruthfulness. The claimant
relied upon the case of Law Society v Kordowski where it was found that the publications
on a website had been made in the knowledge that they would inevitably (and did) come to
the attention of those named on more than one occasion and on each occasion cause them
distress and harm. The Court agreed and, on the material before it, found there were no
available defences. Accordingly, on the basis that Mrs Justice Slade determined the
Claimants were more likely than not to succeed at trial, the injunction was granted.
Misuse of private information
23. On 7 June 2016 you posted a screenshot of a personal letter from The Honourable
Company of Air Pilots to Ms Curtis-Taylor dated 13 January 2016 stating that it had
awarded her the Master’s Medal for 2016 in respect of her flight from the UK to Australia.
The letter was addressed to my client at her home address, part of which had been crossed
out in biro but was still legible.
24. The publication of such a letter, including in particular her home address, amounted to a
misuse of Ms Curtis-Taylor’s private information, and particularly so in the context of your
campaign of vilification and abuse.
25. You did not remove the post despite the fact that, on 8 June 2016, “Cows getting bigger”
pointed out to you that the redaction was ineffective. At 13.01 that day “bose-x” stated that
s/he was “stunned” that the forum operators had permitted you to post the contents of a
private letter showing a private address in a public forum.
26. Instead, your response was to state that the address was the registered address of Ms
Curtis-Taylor’s company. This is irrelevant. It is not apparent, from the fact of registration of
the company at this address at Companies House that it is Ms Curtis-Taylor’s private
residential address. It is however apparent from your post.
Data Protection Act 1998 (“DPA”)
27. In making the posts about Ms Curtis-Taylor you processed her personal data within the
meaning of section 1(1) of the DPA. Since you decided the purposes for which you would
use that data, you are also a data controller in respect of that data for the purposes of
section 1(1). As a result, you were (and are) obliged to comply with section 4(4) of the DPA
in processing Ms Curtis-Taylor’s personal data.
28. By section 4(4) you are required to comply with the eight data protection principles, set out
in Schedule 1 Part I of the DPA, when processing Ms Curtis-Taylor’s personal data.
However, you processed that data in breach of those principles. By way of example:
(a) Contrary to the first principle, you did not process the data fairly, for the reasons
already set out above.
(b) Also contrary to the first principle, you did not process the data lawfully, because
your processing of it amounted to harassment and a misuse of private information
for the reasons already rehearsed above.
(c) Also contrary to the first principle, none of the conditions in Schedule 2 was met.
(d) The data was processed contrary to the second principle, which requires it to be
obtained only for specified purposes, and not to be further processed in a manner
incompatible with them.
(e) Contrary to the third principle, the data was excessive in relation to the purpose for
which it was processed.
(f) Contrary to the fourth principle, the data was inaccurate.
29. Whilst the DPA contains certain protections for the processing of personal data in certain
circumstances, none of these will protect you from liability. The protection for “domestic
purposes” in section 36 applies only to data processed for personal, family or household
affairs. Nor does the section 32 protection apply, because the posts were not made for
journalistic purposes; alternatively if they were, you could not in the circumstances have
held a “reasonable” belief that publication was in the public interest. In that regard, I remind
you that the posts were made to a public forum. And there are hundreds of them.
30. As already noted above in the context of the harassment claim, the processing of Ms
Curtis-Taylor’s data has caused her great distress. Accordingly she is entitled, pursuant to
section 13(2) of the DPA, to be compensated for the distress caused. In relation to the
construction of section 13, we draw your attention to the judgment of the Court of Appeal in
Vidal-Hall v Google Inc [2015] EWCA Civ 311 at [95] to [105].
Remedies
31. In light of the above, Ms Curtis-Taylor is entitled to the following remedies:
(a) Damages for harassment and misuse of private information.
(b) Compensation pursuant to section 13 of the DPA for breach of her data rights.
(c) An injunction against you to prevent further misuse of her private information,
harassment and breaches of her data protection rights.
(d) Pursuant to section 10 of the DPA, the prevention of any further processing likely to
cause her distress. Accordingly, this letter therefore constitutes notice pursuant to
section 10 of the Data Protection Act 1998 to you to cease processing her personal data
with immediate effect.
32. As already noted above, however, Ms Curtis-Taylor’s main concern is to put a stop to the
campaign of harassment as it is causing her alarm and distress and to fear for her personal
safety. Accordingly, she will not pursue her claims for damages against you or require
payment of her legal costs provided that you:
(a) Provide written confirmation that you are Jay Sata, together with a postal
address for service in the event that it becomes necessary to serve any legal
documents upon you.
(b) The removal/deletion of all posts made by you on the PPRuNe forum about,
concerning or relating to Ms Curtis-Taylor.
(c) The removal/deletion of any other material posted by you about, concerning or
relating to Ms Curtis-Taylor in any other forum, website or social media including
but not limited to Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia.
(d) Immediately desist from making any further communications about, concerning
or relating to Ms Curtis-Taylor save for the purposes of taking legal advice and
responding to this letter.
33. If you deny that you are Jay Sata, or fail to provide the written confirmation sought, it will be
necessary for Ms Curtis-Taylor to apply to the Court for an order that the operators of the
PPRuNe forum reveal your identity. She will seek the costs incurred in doing so from you.
34. Similarly, if you fail to provide an address for service, and it becomes necessary to seek an
order from the Court that you do so, Ms Curtis-Taylor will again seek to recover the costs of
that exercise from you.
35. I look forward to hearing from you as soon as reasonably possible and in any event by no
later than 4pm on 25 October 2016.
36. Ms Curtis-Taylor’s sincere hope is that this letter will be taken in the spirit in which it is
intended - as a reasonable warning to you in the circumstances to desist forthwith in your
actions, and that it will put an end to this matter. It is not in anybody’s interests for this
campaign to continue.
37. Given the seriousness of the position, you are urged to take independent legal advice on
the content of this letter, and in particular before you take any further action. If you cannot
afford legal representation your local Citizen’s Advice Bureau may be able to assist you.
Please note that this letter has not been emailed from my email address as the terms of
Public Access do not permit me to conduct litigation on behalf of Ms Curtis-Taylor. Please
direct any response to the email from which this letter is sent, copying me in via my practice
team at:
[email protected].
38. In the meantime Ms Curtis-Taylor’s rights are reserved and this letter does not restrict
those rights in any way.
Yours sincerely,
Lorna Skinne