Scandal victim gets leave to appeal decision to split case against Post Office and Fujitsu

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https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366 ... nd-Fujitsu

Former subpostmaster Lee Castleton has received leave to appeal a High Court decision to split his multimillion-pound legal claim against Fujitsu and the Post Office. A full hearing to determine his appeal will now take place in the Court of Appeal in the next few months.

Castleton, who was awarded an OBE in 2024, is one of the seven former subpostmasters who spoke to Computer Weekly as part of its first investigation into the Horizon scandal in 2008/9.

He is suing the Post Office and Fujitsu for millions of pounds for fraud on the basis of two separate legal proceedings. These are a judgement in favour of the Post Office against him in 2007, which he said was gained through false information, and a group litigation order (GLO) settlement in 2019.

In January, a High Court hearing heard arguments from Fujitsu and Post Office legal teams for there to be separate trial for the two legal proceedings. The Post Office legal team said it was “concerned not only to ensure that it does not incur unnecessary cost, but also that Mr Castleton does not have to either”.

It said it is defending this claim not because Castleton is not entitled to redress, which it said “he plainly is” but because it considers that the correct route to that redress is through the compensation scheme, designed for subpostmasters that took part in the GLO.

Castleton’s team argued against this, but High Court judge Justice Trower ruled that the claim will be split in two, a decision which Castleton has now been granted leave to appeal.

Horizon errors
Castleton said that in the 2007 proceedings against him, the court was misled by untrue statements about the reliability of errors in the Horizon system, and that the Post Office and Fujitsu both knew this but still proceeded to obtain the judgement against him to make an example of him.

It was 2006, when his branch in Bridlington, North Yorkshire showed a loss of £26,000 that he could not explain, that the Post Office demanded he made up the shortfall. He was so concerned about the debt that he refused to pay it back and decided to go to court to contest the Post Office’s insistence that he should pay. Castleton was forced to represent himself in the High Court trial. The Post Office failed to disclose evidence that would have supported his claims that the shortfalls were caused by Horizon errors – not him or his staff.

The Post Office spent more than £320,000 on a civil court action to retrieve the phantom shortfalls in his branch. It has been stated during the Post Office scandal public inquiry that his “head was put on a spike”, as his case in 2006 was used by the Post Office to deter others from challenging it over Horizon system errors.

Read more about Castleton: Subpostmaster demands names of Post Office executives who crushed him to suffocate truth.

At the time Castleton challenged the Post Office in the High Court, an error in the Horizon system – known as the Calendar Square bug – was known but not revealed to him.

During the Post Office scandal public inquiry hearing in 2023, an email dating back to 2006, from a Post Office executive to an executive at Fujitsu, revealed that evidence was kept from Castleton. Marked “Calendar Square: URGENT”, the email read: “Our legal team at the court will be doing their best to persuade the court not to allow [Lee] Castleton to call this evidence because it is filed late and does not relate to the problems at his branch.”

The second legal proceeding being challenged in his current claim came in 2019. Following two out of a planned four trials in the High Court Bates vs The Post Office GLO, 550 subpostmasters including Castleton proved the Post Office Horizon system was to blame for account shortfalls. They agreed to a settlement with the Post Office, which left victims with redress payments, but critical evidence that was not disclosed at the time has been revealed since that agreement.

Following the granting of the leave to appeal the decision to split the case, Castleton’s lawyer Simon Goldberg, senior partner at Simons Muirhead Burton, said: “After everything he has been through, Castleton now wants vindication through a court of law. We are very pleased that our client has been granted leave to appeal in his case and we look forward to arguing his case at the hearing before the Court of Appeal in due course.”

The Post Office and Fujitsu had not responded to questions by the time this article was published.