Post Office Scandal – Averting Group Actions

Post Office Horizon system

James Hartley, Partner and National Head of Dispute Resolution, is of no doubt that, had Post Office Limited considered the potential human impact of a flaw in its Horizon accounting system, and looked at the evidence holistically, it would have avoided the catastrophic human damage inflicted on thousands of its postmasters and averted the PR disaster that unfolded.

Instead, Post Office not only failed to avert the disaster, but when problems arose it compounded matters by taking a stance of “…defend, defend, defend; deny, deny, deny”, which led to a major defeat in the High Court, huge compensatory pay outs, irredeemable reputational damage and a scandal that has become known as the worst miscarriage of justice in British history.

James’ observations are derived from a long career in commercial dispute resolution and from more than six years working on the Post Office case, in which he and his team secured justice for 555 postmasters and exposed Post Office’s unlawful actions.

Post Office scandal

Over a 14-year period, Government-owned Post Office Limited prosecuted more than 700 postmasters for theft and false accounting. Its evidence came principally from data produced by the flawed Horizon computerised point of sale system. As a result, victims faced criminal convictions, were left financially ruined when debts were pursued by Post Office, and many were ostracised from their families and communities.

Post Office denied any wrongdoing for many years. Our legal team, led by James, successfully fought and won the legal battle on behalf of 555 claimant postmasters. Post Office eventually settled the case and issued a formal apology, paying £57.75m in compensation and agreeing to implement a compensation scheme for thousands of other affected postmasters. The historic case also led to a public inquiry and the quashing of hundreds of wrongful criminal convictions.

In 2022, the Government agreed to implement an additional compensation scheme to ensure that the 555 claimants are properly compensated for having to fight the legal case and incur litigation funding costs which unfairly depleted their recoveries in the High Court.

Complex litigation

In fighting this and other complex litigation cases, James’ team is now widely considered to be one of the foremost dispute resolution teams in the UK. The team is consistently within the top 10 law firms that handle the most High Court litigation in the UK.

Post Office lessons learned

• Identifying problems early
  James said: “We encourage businesses to think about the measures that should be put in place to spot potentially high-impact scenarios very early.”
• Litigating with purpose
  James continued: “When problems do occur, we encourage strategies that incorporate ‘People, Planet, Profit’ principles, which can help businesses resolve issues responsibly and efficiently, whilst also preserving or enhancing reputation.”
• Prevention & containment
  Prevention and containment of issues, as mentioned above, is the primary risk-management goal. But if and when your business needs to defend itself against group litigation actions, you need a team that is strategic, so that litigation solutions align with your business objectives.
• ARC system – assessing strategic options
  Using our unique ARC system , we devise winning strategies for clients’ wide-ranging disputes. The ARC system involves a systematic approach to assessing strategic options, risk/benefit outcome scenarios and action plans. This system has been successfully deployed in many cases, including the Post Office case.