SMB instructed by former postmaster, Lee Castleton OBE, to issue proceedings in the High Court against Post Office and Fujitsu

On 14 March, SMB was instructed by former postmaster, Lee Castleton OBE, to issue proceedings in the High Court against the Post Office and Fujitsu.

In 2007, Mr Castleton, a legally unrepresented ‘litigant in person’, was subject to a High Court judgment obtained against him by the Post Office who claimed that he had lost money from the Post Office that he ran, when, in fact, the missing funds were due to ‘balancing errors’ and bugs in the Horizon computer system.

In 2019, in group litigation (made famous in the ITV drama “Mr Bates v the Post Office”) Mr Justice Fraser held that the legal basis for the 2007 judgment against Mr Castleton was wrong. He later gave a further judgment which rejected the Post Office’s contentions that its Horizon system was ‘robust and reliable’, stating that this position was as unreal as the contention that ‘the earth is flat’.  It emerged in the recent Public Inquiry that the Fujitsu Known Error Log had been withheld from disclosure to Mr Castleton in the 2006/7 High Court proceedings.

Mr Castleton will say that the Post Office (conspiring with others) obtained its judgment against him by fraud by withholding evidence of the unreliability of the Horizon system. The 2007 judgment destroyed his business, his livelihood, and his reputation in his community, and it resulted in his bankruptcy.  It had a devastating long-term impact on his own and his family’s health.

Mr Castleton has issued proceedings to seek public vindication by the judgment of the Court that a great injustice and wrong was intentionally done to him and to his family by the Post Office and others.  That is a public vindication that only the Court can give.