Tooley v Associated Newspapers: limitation, relief from sanctions and the protection of journalistic sources

Cynthia Niruka Tooley brought defamation and malicious falsehood claims against Associated Newspapers Limited and Telegraph Media Group Limited arising from articles published in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph between October 2024 and April 2025. The claims concerned coverage of her estrangement from Dr Tooley, the vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham. Mrs Justice Steyn determined a cluster of interlocutory applications spanning limitation, relief from sanctions, interim injunctions and Norwich Pharmacal relief.

Relief from sanctions: TMG claim reinstated

The claimant, acting in person following the unexpected withdrawal of her solicitors in late September 2025, had failed to apply by the court-imposed deadline to lift a stay on her Telegraph claim. Master Stevens' order provided that failure to do so by 5 January 2026 would result in the claim being struck out. The claimant had made the corresponding application in the Associated Newspapers proceedings but overlooked doing the same in the Telegraph matter — she had received the two nearly identical stay orders several weeks apart, the second arriving long after the first had been noted in her records.

Applying the Denton principles, Steyn J found the breach significant but explained by genuine inadvertence rather than any deliberate or tactical choice. The court acknowledged the claimant's unrepresented status as a marginal — not decisive — factor, consistent with the Supreme Court's approach in Barton v Wright Hassall. A recently obtained ADHD diagnosis was given little weight, not being a Part 35-compliant expert report. Nonetheless, the interests of justice favoured reinstatement: the claimant had plainly intended to pursue the claim, had engaged with the pre-action protocol throughout, and had applied to lift the stay in the parallel proceedings within time. Relief from sanctions was granted and the TMG claim reinstated.

Limitation: the ANL1 claim dismissed

The first Associated Newspapers claim, concerning an article published on 18 October 2024, was issued five days outside the one-year limitation period under section 4A of the Limitation Act 1980. The claimant applied under section 32A for the period to be disapplied.

Steyn J refused. The claimant had known of the article from its earliest stages — the journalist had written to her two days before publication — and so section 32A(2)(b) was inapplicable from the outset. Her explanations for the delay, including an assertion that police retention of her devices had left her technologically unable to conduct litigation, were comprehensively undermined by contemporaneous correspondence showing active engagement with multiple sets of proceedings throughout the relevant period. The loss of her solicitors three weeks before the deadline, whilst unexpected, left a gap that she had not adequately explained.

Applying Bewry v Reed Elsevier and Otuo v Watchtower Bible, Steyn J emphasised that disapplication of the limitation period in defamation cases is genuinely exceptional, that time is "of the essence" in such claims and that — echoing Tugendhat J in Hallam Estates v Baker — "a miss is as good as a mile". The ANL1 claim was dismissed.

Interim injunctions refused

Applications for interim injunctions to restrain continued publication of the articles fell at multiple hurdles. The Bonnard v Perryman rule requires a claimant to show that a defamation claim is bound to succeed before pre-trial restraint will be granted. Here, the TMG article was not unarguably defamatory of the claimant; both defendants indicated an intention to plead truth as a substantive defence; and the ANL1 claim had been dismissed. The court also noted, as a further material factor, that the injunction applications had been brought with considerable delay.

Norwich Pharmacal application refused

The claimant sought disclosure of the identity of sources who had allegedly supplied information about civil proceedings in Luton County Court and about a claim of cat abandonment in the first Daily Mail article. Steyn J found the first condition — arguable wrongdoing by an ultimate wrongdoer — was not met. The Luton proceedings had been public, with no reporting restriction in place, and no pre-trial disclosure to the Daily Mail could be inferred from the article itself. The "cat" allegation rested on phraseological similarities between the article and a later solicitor's letter, which the court found insufficient. Even had the conditions been satisfied, the protection of journalistic sources under section 10 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 and article 10 ECHR would not have been displaced: the interests of justice were not so pressing as to override that protection.

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