23.07.2026
The Court of Appeal has handed down judgment in the appeal from Stephen Houseman KC’s High Court ruling of November 2025, which we reported on at the time. Lord Justice Males, giving the leading judgment (with which Lord Justice Phillips and Lord Justice Foxton agreed), dismissed the claimants’ appeal and allowed the defendants’ cross-appeal to the extent of discharging the worldwide freezing orders obtained by the claimants.
Background
The underlying claim concerns a stock lending transaction entered into in 2021, under which the claimants transferred shares said to be worth over US$400 million as collateral for a loan of around US$115 million. The claimants allege that they were induced to enter into that transaction, and to transfer the shares, by fraudulent misrepresentations, and that the shares were subsequently misappropriated. Proceedings were issued on 2 August 2024, and the claimants obtained a worldwide freezing order without notice to the defendants that day, followed by further freezing orders later that month. The defendants’ application to discharge those orders on grounds of non-disclosure was dismissed in October 2024.
Unknown to the defendants at the time, an investigation firm had by then been engaged, on the claimants’ instructions, to approach the then solicitor with conduct of the defendants’ case. Posing as a representative of a prospective client, an operative met with the then solicitor on a number of occasions between October and November 2024, including in Amsterdam, and covertly recorded him discussing aspects of the defendants’ litigation and settlement strategy.
Armed with that material, the claimants issued an application for summary judgment in March 2025. The defendants responded with an application to strike out or stay the claim as an abuse of process and later applied to discharge the freezing orders. All three applications were heard together by Deputy Judge Houseman KC in November 2025, culminating in the judgment we reported on at the time. Both sides appealed, and the Court of Appeal heard the appeal earlier this month.
On appeal, the claimants challenged the Deputy Judge’s finding of abuse of process itself and his decision to strike out their summary judgment application without first determining whether the material obtained fell within the ‘iniquity exception’ to legal professional privilege.
The Court of Appeal’s Decision
The Court of Appeal agreed that the claimants’ conduct amounted to a serious abuse of process. Lord Justice Males held that it made no difference that the targeted solicitor should not have revealed what he did, observing that the claimants “were paying millions of pounds” for information “which should not have been available to them for use in the litigation” and had “expected and intended to benefit from” it. He went further than the Deputy Judge in describing the conduct as unlawful as well as abusive, and as amounting to “a form of corruption.”
The Court of Appeal also agreed that the Deputy Judge had been right to refuse the claimants’ summary judgment application, however, it held that striking out this did not properly reflect the gravity of the claimants’ conduct, and that the Deputy Judge had been wrong not to consider discharging the freezing orders as an alternative or additional response. Exercising their discretion, the Court of Appeal discharged all the freezing orders obtained by the claimants, including those made in support of the proprietary claims, on the basis that the orders should not have continued once it became apparent that the claimants were engaged in this conduct.
The Court of Appeal was clear that the question of what use, if any, the claimants may make of the material obtained, and what effect their conduct should have on the equitable and discretionary relief they seek, remains to be determined. The issue of whether there can still be a fair trial of the action also remains to be determined.
Why It Matters
The judgment is a significant addition to the law of abuse of process and the protection of legal professional privilege and confirms in clear terms that deceiving an opponent’s solicitor to obtain privileged litigation material will not be tolerated by English courts, whatever the perceived merits of the underlying claim.
Representation
The defendants were represented by Trevor Mascarenhas, Cath Eason, Sofia Evans, Ben Cook and Dalia Afrasiab of PCB Byrne, instructing Niranjan Venkatesan KC & Alex Georgiou.
For the judgment, click Ricardo Benjamin Salinas Pliego & Anor v Astor Asset Management 3 Limited & Ors - Find Case Law - The National Archives.
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