Cumbria Zoo Company Ltd v The Zoo Investment Company Ltd [2022] EWHC 3379 (Ch)

Second, I finish this judgment with a plea to the parties and others involved in the case to try to bridge their remaining differences without the expense of further litigation. The court is of course here to determine and give effect to their rights and if it is impossible for them to agree an appropriate resolution of issues it will of course perform that task. It may appear to be parties, when allegations of dishonesty and theft are being made, that they will not be able to resolve matters other than through court hearings.

But any observer of this dispute cannot fail to be horrified by the course of this litigation. Large amounts of time and money, which could be put to the cause of animal welfare, are instead being spent on the pursuit of obscure legal argument, seemingly motivated by bad feeling between various people. The parties may each think that they are the only people capable of running a zoo properly but where the regulators appear to think that either is capable of doing so, the dispute over which should run this High Court Approved Judgment Cumbria Zoo Co Ltd. v Zoo Investment Co Ltd. Page 67 particular zoo seems a remarkably pointless battle and a waste of precious resources on both sides.

Added to the unnecessary waste of time and cost is the human price of this kind of dispute. I have commented above on the foul terms in which one of the witnesses in this case has spoken of another on social media. More generally, whatever the rights and wrongs of his position, I have no doubt that Mr Rivera has been badly bruised by the dispute. I am sure that others have been too. If this litigation proceeds, those involved are only likely to be more severely affected by it.

In the case of TMO Renewables v Yeo [2022] EWCA Civ 1409, Asplin LJ had this to say in a context where a party had declined to engaged in mediation because it considered it to be “expensive waste of time”: “40… this case was ideally suited to mediation, especially in the light of the fact that reputations were at stake, the defendants contended that the claim was deeply flawed and the claimant was open to discussing the provision of additional information about its claim. Rather than being an expensive waste of time, it would have forced both sides to take a more realistic approach to the litigation. It would have been likely to have saved much of the very considerable amount of time and costs which were ultimately expended. In the end, the negative attitude towards an attempt at negotiated dispute resolution which was adopted, cost everyone dear. In future, both parties and their advisers should approach the possibility of mediation in a more positive light.

When this case next comes before me, I expect to hear each of the parties’ realistic proposals for attempting to negotiate settlement of outstanding issues. The carrot I offer to the parties is the peace of mind and saving in cost that would come with a negotiated settlement. The stick is that any party who is not willing to engage in this process risks finding themselves subject to an adverse costs order. As the recent decision in Moradi v The Home Office [2022] EWHC 3125 demonstrates, the court will not hesitate to penalise even a successful party who unreasonably declines to engage in negotiation.