This recently published High Court judgment from Mrs Justice Lieven, K v J & Anor [2026] EWHC 1792 (Fam) appears to have a typo in the headnote which says ‘Between K and J and L (Permission for Consent Proceedings)’. What K was applying for was permission to apply for the committal to prison of his ex-wife (J) and a friend of hers (L) for contempt of court, so we think this should say ‘contempt’ not ‘consent’. The same error appears on both TNA and BAILII.
In the context of current concerns and debates about the use of committal proceedings for contempt in Court of Protection and Family Court cases, this mis-labelling could lead to some confusion. We’ve emailed TNA to ask them to check.
It’s also confusing that the opening paragraphs say that K (the ex-husband) was applying for ‘committal’ but most of the judgment is about his failing in an attempt to show there’d been contempt. He’d have to prove the contempt in order to apply for committal.
The application was struck out as an abuse of process, the judge commenting:
the court must be quick to detect where contempt proceedings are being pursued for illegitimate purposes. This is particularly important in Family cases where abusive partners quite frequently use the courts and the litigation process as an instrument of harassment and coercive control. The court must be astute to prevent itself being used in this way. [48]
However, the first stage of this ‘abuse of process’ had been allowed to drag on for several months – it’s not clear exactly what date K had made his initial contempt application, although it was prior to February this year and wasn’t struck out until June.
History
Briefly, J had been protected from K by a series of non molestation orders since 2021 and a restraining order in 2025. Findings of violence had been made against K in child arrangements proceedings in 2020. In July 2021, four men had gone to the home of L’s parents asking where J was living and one is alleged to have said to L’s father “we don’t want your daughter to get hurt”. The incident was captured on CCTV. Although K and three other men were charged with offences of harassment and causing actual bodily harm related to this visit, the charges were dropped after a very long delay in the criminal process. Nevertheless, there was evidence before Lieven J of the considerable danger the police investigating officer had believed J to be in.
Basis of the application for committal for contempt
During the criminal process, K was shown copies of messages that L and J had sent each other in July 2021 which he claimed were similar to the facts set out in L’s witness statement. This, he said, amounted to contempt of court because they were colluding to fabricate evidence.
J applied to have K’s application struck out.
The judgment
Lieven J set out the relevant case law for the test for granting permission to apply for contempt – Zurich Insurance Plc v Romaine [2019] EWCA Civ 851.
She concluded that K’s application should be struck out on the basis that it had no prospect of success and was an abuse of the court process. The text messages on which K’s application was founded were subject to litigation privilege and could not be relied on in proceedings.
Second, his application was ‘replete with procedural failures. These vary from the very serious to the relatively minor.’ This was despite the fact that this wasn’t K’s first attempt at the application.
Third, there was no substantive merit in his application, and it was bound to fail. The proposition that because J had set out in the WhatsApp exchange what L should cover in her witness statement, this meant that L’s witness statement was fabricated, simply did not follow. The sequence of events was recorded in the CCTV footage. L then rang J to warn her about what had happened and J asked her to put it in a witness statement. L then texted some hours later to check precisely what she should cover in that witness statement. None of the material showed, ‘even on a civil let alone a criminal standard of proof, that J was asking L to fabricate evidence. The evidence, even at its highest, does not come close to establishing that J and L had an intent to mislead the court.’
Comment
This is the second recent case we’ve noticed in a family court context where Lieven J has found that an abusive party has tried to use contempt of court law, with its accompanying threat of being sent to prison, as part of a litigation strategy to continue the abuse. In Donovan Sappleton v R1 & Anor [2026] EWHC 1782 (Fam), heard in May, she cited the judge in child arrangements proceedings back in 2024 as having concluded, after two years of litigation:
‘On the evidence before me, I am quite satisfied that the endless referrals and the proceedings have been weaponised by the father and are part of a strategy of relentless pursuit of the mother. This behaviour on his part does amount to harassment, in my judgment, and it is controlling of her.’
However, Mr Sappleton had managed to take up further court time and continue the harassment of his ex- partner through several unsuccessful applications to the High Court.
Lieven J said about that contempt application:
‘this application is a blatant abuse of process. It is a very clear example of the weaponisation of contempt proceedings to extend the coercive use of litigation and harassment in a way that the court should be astute to prevent.’
Yet somehow, Mr Sappleton’s flawed application to commit his ex partner and her father to prison for contempt, made in December 2025, was not struck out until this hearing in May 2026. Although he’d had legal representation at one point, Mr Sappleton’s lawyer had been forced to step aside as ‘professionally embarrassed’ i.e. not able to continue with the case in accordance with the barristers’ code of conduct and duty to the court.
It wouldn’t seem too difficult for the court to run some sort of administrative screening stage for vexatious complaints like these that waste valuable court time as well as prolonging the distress and anxiety of the other party.
Image of prison bars: Wikimedia Commons
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