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Court Hearing Makes Order Changes with Costs Payable by Nominet
City and Mayor’s Court changed Court Orders that Nominet had wrongly made after a previous hearing in February this year.
Nominet was also ordered to pay Jim Davies’ costs.
The Judge held that Nominet wrongly changed the Orders made in February and which were included in the settlement agreement it had previously reached with Jim Davies.
They then fought and lost on Halloween, remarkably claiming that there was no difference between “dismissed” and “the compromise is binding and the claim is discontinued”
When their first argument failed, they then said it had been an accidental slip. That question was not dealt with by the Court, who said the matter was closed and so did not review how it had happened, other than that it was done by Nominet.
Nominet were Ordered to pay Jim Davies’ costs, as his application had succeeded.
Jim was not in Court in February, because he thought the matter had settled and he was in Australia at the time.
He only realised that the Orders had been changed when he obtained a transcript of the hearing. If he hadn’t done that, Nominet would have got away with changing the Orders to ones that they wanted, rather than the ones that were made.
Even then, Nominet did not agree to fixing the problem, claiming that there was no difference between “Dismissed” and “the compromise is binding and the claim is discontinued”
That was after they fought and lost in February that there had not been a binding agreement, even though it was them who had made the offer to settle.
Their own costs thrown away at the two hearings would be around £50,000.
False Claims by the Directors and Questions for the Executive
Kieren McCarthy told the Members Forum that
The Board Report that followed claimed :
Anyone who reviewed the file in any way would realise that this statement was misleading and false.
Not only would they almost certainly see that the Orders were not the same as the ones that the lawyers would have noted at the time; but they would know that Nominet’s attempt to be heard on their strike out application had been rejected by the Judge and suggesting otherwise was untruthful and misleading.
Did Kieren look at the original file, as he should have done given his undertaking on the Members Forum. Or did he not do proper due diligence and instead relied on a report from the Executive?
We know that Nick Wenban-Smith was in Court in February and would have known what happened there and what Orders were made. What did he say to the Board?
How to Fix It
The Board Report is wrong and is harmful to Jim Davies’ professional reputation.
He has been publicly criticised as a direct consequence of what the directors said in that Report.
The false claim was then repeated and republished by Paul Fletcher in a CEO members call.
The Board need to fix this, given that they have each individually signed off on the false Board Report.
We call on the Nominet board to act quickly to:
- Apologise unreservedly for falsely claiming that the proceedings had been struck out and for wrongly suggesting that Jim Davies’ claim had failed on its merits
- Review the original legal files and explain to both Jim and the membership what happened when the Orders were changed in February
- Set out what processes they propose to put in place to ensure that this does not happen again
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