EDO MBM Technology Ltd v Campaign to Smash EDO and Others ([2005] EWHC 837 (QB)) was a High Court of Justice civil action brought by EDO MBM Technology Ltd, a subsidiary of EDO Corporation, against protesters in Brighton, that began in April 2005 and was settled by March 2006.
It changed name to EDO Technology Limited ("EDO") and David Anthony Jones v Campaign to Smash EDO and Others ([2005] EWHC 2490 (QB))to join the managing director and employees of the company as claimants. Two of the defendants, unincorporated associations "Smash EDO" and "Bombs Out of Brighton Campaign", were struck out in April 2005 because they were unrepresented.
Introduction
An anti-war protest campaign against EDO MBM Technology Ltd ("EDO") began in Brighton in 2004 as a direct result of press articles confirming the company was making parts for then new Paveway IV guided bomb to be used in the Iraq War. The ongoing protests led EDO, in April 2005, to seek a permanent high court injunction against 14 named protesters and two protest groups, Smash EDO and Bombs out Of Brighton, on grounds of harassment. The intended injunction, brought under Section 3 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, applied to all protesters, not only those named in the court papers (who in any case denied the allegations). Breach of any condition of the civil injunction carried a criminal penalty of up to five years in prison.
Preliminary issues trial
The High Court proceedings at the Royal Courts of Justice, opened a legal argument to the defendants of 'preventing war crimes', allowing them to put forward evidence of EDO's complicity in war crimes, and refer to the International Criminal Court Act 2001. This legal defence was taken seriously by the court. It had been dismissed in lower courts in Brighton as beyond their jurisdiction.
While a defence that protesters could have been justified in harassing employees of the company to stop a war crime being committed was rejected by the court in a preliminary issues trial of November 2005, on the grounds that such crimes could not be prevented over a long term, but only in immediate actions to stop imminent and specific crimes, the court accepted that a further defense argument should be open. This was that if the protesters could show they were acting reasonably in the circumstances on the basis of an objective evidential test, then there was a defence that any harassment, if it had taken place, could be lawful.
The defendants collated a dossier of evidence that outlined alleged links between EDO and war crimes. This included statements given by witnesses and bombing victims from Palestine. It also included reports from journalists and human rights groups of possible war crimes in both Iraq and Palestine. The judge praised the detailed document as 'admirable'. The document detailed incidents of war crimes related to air strikes on civilian areas and infrastructure and argued that the attack and invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was in itself illegal as a war of aggression in contravention of the UN Charter.
Attorney General's intervention in the case
The barrister David Perry was instructed by the UK Attorney-General to defend the legality of the war on Iraq, and apparently support EDO's case for the injunction. Perry described the protests and non-violent direct actions (NVDA) in Brighton as 'a mask for anarchy' and suggested that the protesters belief that EDO were complicit in war crimes was imaginary and even dangerous. The written submissions of the AG to the High Court supported EDO's claim that the arms company did not supply Israel with military equipment. Later in a Freedom of Information response in 2006 the Attorney General's Office admitted that Perry had simply taken the word of the company on this issue and assumed it to be true even though he had not verified it.
Despite this intervention, the court did not accept the AG's argument that taking into account an honestly held belief by protesters that war crimes had taken place assisted by EDO, was wrong. The court found that if there was an imminent war crime that the protesters believed on reasonable grounds, was about to take place, in which EDO were complicit, then preventative direct action could lawfully be taken against the company without waiting for the authorities of the state to intervene. This ruling effectively allowed proportionate direct action against companies by protesters, if the threat of the crime was imminent and specific.