Technology Dispute Resolution

Case study: Post Office miscarriage of justice

Freeths, the legal team who took on the Post Office to successfully fight one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history

The Case: one of UK’s most complex and high-profile technology disputes

James Hartley, Dispute Resolution Partner, and the man who launched one of the most significant group actions ever pursued in the UK, against the powerful organisation of the government-owned Post Office Limited – and won.

Over a 14-year period, Post Office Limited criminally prosecuted more than 700 postmasters for theft and false accounting, based merely on information from a flawed computer system called Horizon. As a result, victims were criminally convicted, pursued for debts and made financially destitute; many were also cut off from communities and their whole families were destroyed.

The Freeths’ legal team, led by James, successfully fought and won the legal battle on behalf of the 555 claimant postmasters. Post Office Limited eventually settled the case, issued a formal apology, paid £57.75m in compensation and agreed to implement a compensation scheme for 1,000’s of other affected postmasters. The case also led to a public inquiry and the quashing of hundreds of wrongful criminal convictions.

The Government also agreed in 2022 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.

“As a team, we worked seamlessly all the way through which was key to our success. We are used to handling large complex cases. But in this case there was a big weight on our shoulders because we knew, for these postmaster claimants, it was unthinkable to lose the case. Loosing it would have been devastating for these people because there would be nowhere else for them to go and there would be nothing more they could have done, so it was a big responsibility.”
James Hartley | Partner & National Head of Dispute Resolution

Testimonials

“Their dedication and expertise was extraordinary and they deserve due recognition for the vital and central role they played in unmasking the injustice of the Post Office scandal and securing the judgments and settlement which have underpinned everything that has happened since.”

“This was David v Goliath litigation, on a large scale; from the outside, the difficulties which the claimants faced now seem masked by the scale of injustice that success in the litigation has revealed.  But Freeths deserve credit for taking it on, securing funding and managing this extraordinary litigation to a successful conclusion.”
Patrick Green QC | Henderson Chambers

“James Hartley and Freeths deserve huge credit for taking on this case.  What is now recognised as the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history was, at the beginning, a complex and disparate set of stories from individual subpostmasters, about events spanning decades, and in the face of outright denials from the Post Office.  Other firms had tried and failed to do what Freeths ultimately achieved.  It could not have been achieved without the unfailing commitment of James Hartley to the cause of the subpostmasters, and his unshakeable confidence in the merits.”

“Imogen Randall was exceptional throughout: she was indefatigable in her efforts to find justice for the subpostmasters and expose the truth behind Post Office’s lies.  She carried a great weight of responsibility across all aspects of the fact and expert evidence at both common issues trials.”
Kathleen Donnelly | Barrister | Henderson Chambers

“In the face of ferocious denial of the claim by Post Office and its lawyers, and even when it looked like it could go either way on technical legal issues, the team kept going. If they hadn’t, we’d never have known the scale of the injustice, the sub-postmasters’ criminal convictions would still be in place, and there would be no compensation schemes.”
Karl Flinders | Chief reporter | Computer Weekly