The claimants, Mr and Mrs L, brought proceedings in the tort of harassment against the respondents, B, Leeds United Football Club Limited and Yorkshire Radio Limited relating to comments made by B in various editions of the Leeds United Football Club match programme and announcements on the club's radio station, which was operated by Yorkshire Radio. Prior to these proceedings, Mr L had been successful in libel proceedings against the respondents.

At first instance, HHJ Gosnell found that the second claimant, Mrs L, had suffered alarm and stress as a the result of the pursuit by B of a personal grudge against Mr L, which the judge found amounted to the statutory tort of harassment against him, awarding him £10,000.

However, Mrs L failed in her claim because the judge found that, save on one occasion, where B insinuated in an article that the couple had split up, B's conduct was not aimed at her. Accordingly, the one targeted instance could not amount to harassment, given that a "course of conduct" against a person, as defined in the 1997 Act, had to involve conduct on at least two occasions to that person.

The judge found that other publications, such as one which revealed the claimants' home address, were not targeted at Mrs L. While she might be affected by the suggested confrontation by fans to Mr L, that was not the test. Similarly, although Mrs L would have been affected by another publication which referred to Mr L's home telephone number and which seemed to encourage fans to contact him to complain about his conduct, it was not B's intention that she be harassed by it.

Although the judge accepted that there might be an objective element where a defendant does not intend to target a victim, but ought to know he is targeting her, the judge concluded that even objectively these articles could not be construed as targeting her.

The claimants appealed.

The court allowed the appeal.

Briggs LJ giving the leading judgment, noted that the appeal raised the important question of to what extent, if at all, may a person who has been harmed (or who anticipates harm) from harassment aimed at someone else, avail herself of the protection of the civil remedies under the 1997 Act.

Critical to this was whether, in transforming Lord Phillips' phrase in Thomas of "targeted at an individual" to the phrase "targeted at the claimant" Simon J in Dowson went a step too far. In the view of Briggs LJ, view, he did.

However, neither of those two cases disclosed a disconnect, that is that the person targeted and those suffering the consequences were not the same.

Trimington was the first case where that disconnect arose on the facts, and Tugendhat J was careful to leave open the question as to whether the person who was not the primary target, but who was harmed in the relevant sense by the publications, could complain of harassment. This was, so far as Briggs LJ was aware, only the second case in which such a disconnect between the target and the victim had arisen.

There were two main reasons why Briggs LJ considered that it was not a requirement of the statutory tort of harassment that the claimant be the target of the perpetrator's conduct:

However, distress suffered out of sympathy for the targeted victim of harassment is insufficient to found a claim under the 1997 Act. The claimant must be harassed by it, in the sense that the conduct complained of must have some direct effect on the claimant (in terms of causing foreseeable harm, usually, but not limited to, alarm and distress).

Accordingly, the judge concluded that the ability to bring a harassment claim extended beyond the targeted individual to others who are forseeably and directly harmed by the targeted conduct, if they were victims of it.

Therefore, the judge considered that HHJ Gosnell had been wrong to exclude Mrs L from a claim based on two particular allegations of harassment namely the two articles which published the claimants' home address and referred to the claimants' home phone number. The two articles constituted harassment of Mrs L, because they invited thousands of club supporters to intervene in a hostile manner at her home.

However, the two articles could not be aggregated with the earlier article insinuating that the couple had split up, as the latter was simply a slur on her relationship with her husband. Nevertheless, those two articles together amounted to a sufficient course of conduct to establish a cause of action for the statutory tort of harassment, entitling her to damages in the sum of £6,000.

As noted by the judge, this is only the second case in a claim under the 1997 Act where there has been a disconnect, that is, that the person targeted and those suffering the consequences are not the same. In the first such case, Trimingham, the judge did not actually decide the issue, but left it open as to whether a person who is not the primary target. but who was harmed by the relevant publications, could complain of harassment. Accordingly, this is the first case in which a victim has been able to take advantage of the provisions of the 1997 Act, despite not being the person targeted. In reaching his decision, Briggs LJ has in effect overturned the decision in Dowson that a claim for harassment must be targeted at the claimant. It may be argued that there is a danger that widening the scope of the 1997 Act in this way will open the floodgates by enabling close family members of targets to bring claims by asserting alarm and stress out of sympathy for the victim. However, in the judge's view, such alarm or stress would be insufficient to found a claim under the 1997 Act.

Levi and another v Bates and others [2015] EWCA Civ 206 (12 March 2015) (Bailii).