A court summons issued against Reginald D Hunter has been quashed in the UK after a judge said Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) misled him when bringing a private prosecution against the comedian.
District judge Michael Snow said the group’s motive in seeking to prosecute Mr Hunter was “to have him cancelled” and ruled the prosecution “abusive”.
He said CAA had “demonstrated by the misleading and partial way in which it summarised its application and its wilful, repeated failure to meet its disclosure obligations that its true and sole motive in seeking to prosecute RH is to have him cancelled. I have no doubt that the prosecution is abusive.”
The US stand-up comedian had been accused of three counts of sending an offensive communication on three occasions – on August 24th, September 10th and 11th last year – to Heidi Bachram on social media. A summons was issued in the case.
READ MORE
But after an application from the defence, the judge said CAA had sought to use the criminal justice system for “improper reasons” and that he would have refused to issue the summons had all the information been laid before him.
In a judgment delivered at Westminster magistrates court on Tuesday, he said CAA was “seeking to use the criminal justice system, in this case for improper reasons”.
The judge said a summary of Mr Bachram’s tweeting in the application case summary was “wholly inadequate”.
He added: “It did not reveal the extent of her tweets directed against Reginald Hunter in the period immediately preceding the complaints (her tweets were sent between 15 August and 11 September 2024). The summary misled me into believing that his comments were addressed to her involvement with the Jewish faith as opposed to his response to attempts that were being made to have him ‘cancelled’.”
Mr Hunter’s lawyer Rebecca Chalkley KC told the hearing on Tuesday that “very little was disclosed” to the court and the “lack of candour” meant the summons should be quashed.
She told the judge: “You were led to believe in papers in front of you that the CAA was no more than a charity, that it had no history – as since demonstrated – as a vexatious litigant, no complaints, no criticism in parliament.”
She accused the CAA of “using the courts for their own political agenda”.
The CAA’s prosecutor Donal Lawler told the hearing that the charity had complied with its duty of candour. – Guardian
