The law on newcomer injunctions continues to rapidly evolve and develop. Cases including drones, and the right to protest, have hit the headlines.
Since the Supreme Court's decision in Wolverhampton City Council v London Gypsies and Travellers in 2023 confirmed that private and public landowners can seek injunctive relief from the Courts to enforce their rights against unknown trespassers onto their land (known formally in court proceedings as "Persons Unknown"), the Courts are increasingly being asked to consider granting interim and final "newcomer" injunctions.
In the recent case of MBR Acres Ltd v Curtin [2025], in which judgment was handed down earlier this year, the Court had to decide whether Persons Unknown flying drones over land could be trespassers, and whether they were a class of person capable of being restrained by injunction before they had carried out that activity, or even before they had stepped onto the land in question.
MBR Acres Ltd, and its related company B&K Universal Limited, sought newcomer injunctions against Persons Unknown, and known, named or anonymised animal rights protestors to prevent them from trespassing at MBR Acres' site, where animals are bred for laboratory research, and which had been the scene of numerous protests by animal rights protestors most notably between 2021 and 2022.
Following previous judgments in newcomer injunction cases, the Court, in assessing whether to grant the newcomer injunction, held that it was for the applicants to demonstrate that, among other factors, there was a "compelling need" for the court to grant an injunction; that it was just and convenient to grant such an injunction; and that no other suitable remedies were available or likely to be effective in deterring the newcomers from trespassing.
On the facts, the Court held that the likelihood of newcomers continuing to trespass on MBR Acres' land and/or interfere with MBR's right of access to the public highway abutting its land was sufficient to grant a newcomer injunction. Following previous cases, it handed down a two-year injunction and set out that, at the expiry of those two years, the Court should consider again whether to renew the injunction or allow it to expire.
However, the Judge raised concerns about the potential risk of abuse and restriction of individuals' rights to freedom of speech that newcomer injunctions, particularly in protestor cases such as this, could bring following the decision in the Wolverhampton case.
The Court also set out that trespass on private land, and trespass on public land, are different forms of trespass, with different underpinning law and different requirements which a claimant or applicant must prove to establish a trespass had occurred.
In assessing whether flying a drone over private land could amount to a trespass, and whether it could grant a newcomer injunction against Persons Unknown flying their drones over the private land, it decided that trespass over land could only occur where it interfered with the "ordinary use of the land" (citing long-established case law in Bernstein). Trespass could therefore only occur if the drone was being flown at a height that was an interference, having regard to (for example) the height of the buildings on the land.
On the facts, the drones in question were being flown at about the height of a 15-16 story building, which the judge held were unlikely to be seen by the naked eye from the ground. As such, whilst the judge refused to rule out the possibility of trespass by drones, he decided that no trespass had occurred in this case.
Since the Supreme Court's decision in Wolverhampton CC, newcomer injunctions are coming up in a variety of new, complicated, ways. It remains to be seen how far the courts will be willing to go in granting these injunctions, and which protections will be mandated going forward.
