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EA solicitor defamed in waste wood case says judge

cockwells wood fire

The High Court has found that the owner of a garden centre defamed an Environment Agency (EA) lawyer after being fined for keeping waste wood without an environmental permit.

A hearing to determine the meaning of a press release issued by Antony Joyner and Joyners Plants decided that it defamed EA solicitor Dylan Sadler.

Richard Spearman QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court, ordered Joyner to pay £20,000 in costs. The hearing concerned only meaning, not damages or other measures.

The case arose after Joyner was in November 2018 prosecuted after allowing two men to set up an illegal waste wood recycling business.

Joyner was ordered then to pay a total of £12,850 in fines, costs and compensation at Exeter Crown Court after pleading guilty to knowingly permitting the keeping of controlled waste with no environmental permit, contrary to the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

In 2015, he had  leased part of Cockwells Nursery, near Totnes, to Steven Loveridge and David Weeks who ran it as Woody’s Recycling.

Woody’s Recycling ceased trading after Loveridge was jailed for an unrelated offence, leaving some 10,000 tonnes of waste wood and 3,000 tree stumps at the site.

Joyner tried unsuccessfully to get another recycling company to remove the wood, but it caught fire in May 2016 (pictured).

Weeks and Loveridge later pleaded guilty to offences concerned with the waste wood operation.

Mr Spearman was told that, for about a year after November 2018, Joyners published on its website, “to a large but presently unquantifiable number of readers”, a press release which said the EA had initially wished to prosecute Joyner for bringing waste wood to the site.

The press release said: “...after a nine-month legal battle this criminal charge was then dropped by the EA just before trial, when the evidence showed the [Joyner family] were clearly not involved in bringing wood on to site.

“The EA should never have brought this charge and it was thrown out by their own legal expert!! This resulted in a waste of £6,000 of legal costs being incurred for no reason by the EA in trying to bring a false charge.”

Sadler said the wording of the release meant that he had knowingly induced Loveridge, a convicted criminal, to concoct false evidence against Joyner by offering a lesser sentence, wasted money on a fruitless charge against Joyner, brought the prosecution vindictively and that his suitability for his EA role was questionable.

Spearman agreed with Sadler that all these meanings were defamatory and not mere statements of opinion.

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