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PAUL MARSHALL
CORNERSTONE BARRISTERS
2-3 GRay’s INNS SQUARE
Gray’s IND
WCIR 5JH.
pmarshall@
Tuesday 5 March 2024
Dear Sir Wyn,
Re: Post Office — Post Office’s Closing Written Submissions on Phase 4
Mrs Oyeteju Adedayo ~ Complaint
I write on behalf of Mrs Oyeteju (“Teju”) Adedayo. She has given evidence to you
on human impact: 21 February 2022
with her claims to damages/compensation. Having previously been represented by others (on
compensation and in the Inquiry), she is now represented by Messrs. Hodge Jones & Allen in
the Inquiry. This letter has been provided in draft to HJA and to Mr Edward Henry K.C.
who have agreed with it, but the letter and any errors in it are mine not theirs.
(from 1.22). Trepresent Mrs Adedayo in connection
Mrs Adedayo hi
read the Post Office’s written submissions on Phase 4 of the Inquiry. Through tears, she told
me “they left me penniless” and “they have ruined my life” and “now they are saying this
publicly”. Mrs Adedayo has requested that I formally make complaint to you on her behalf
about these matters and I do so, So far as the submissions concern her, these appear not only
contacted me in a state of anxie
and acute distress, her having
to be impermissible (as to reliance upon the opinion of Jonathan Laidlaw K.C.) but also
professionally improper.
Given what I refer to below, the Post Office’s submission at paragraph 38.5 is most
concerning: “Given the possibility that Ms Adedayo's case may be subject to litigation, the Inquiry should
exercise caution before making findings in
cumstances where, unlike a future court, it has not heard evidence
tested by cross-examination” .
Tam aware of the attempt by the Post Office to submit expert evidence on criminal
evidence and procedure in the form of opinion expressed by Mr Jonathan Laidlaw K.C.. I
am also aware that the Inquiry declined to admit Mr Laidlaw’s evidence. I have read the
statement of 29" February 2024.
Mrs Adedayo’s appeal in the Crown Court was a venire de novo. The Post Office, in
effect, offered no evidence. That it now maintains that it considered it not to be in the public
interest to retry Mrs Adedayo is entirely beside the point. It is not entitled to
aspersions that it does at paragraph 38.2, given its decision not to s trial.
I shall keep my observations brief. Ms Bernard, an investigator employed by the Post
Office who was responsible for the investigation of Mrs Adedayo, gave evidence to the Inquiry
on 10 November 202
Ms Bernard’s evidence was that she did not believe Mrs Adedayo’s
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account given in what is referred to asa ‘confession’ in a document signed on 5 September
2005 (Transcript 66/4). Ms Bernard considered it to be a confused account (as indeed it was)
(Transcript 59/11, 59/12).
witness statement in connection with her investigation of Mrs Adedayo. Surprisingly, her view
was that it was up to Mrs Adedayo to resolve any confusion in relation to the account that she
anscript 77/ 1-15).
Ms Bernard said that she believed that she herself had not made a
had given (T
It would appear that Mrs Adedayo was prosecuted on the basis of a ‘confession’ that
she had made to a member of the Post Office’s audit team, in circumstances of considerable
distress to her at the time of their visit on 5 September 2005, that the Post Office’s own
investigating officer did not believe to be true. The corollary is that Mr Bernard believed the putative
‘confession’ to be untrue. Ms Debbie Stapel, a barrister and former senior member of the
Post Office criminal legal team, gave evidence to the Inquiry that, had the Post Office sought
to rely upon Mrs Adedayo’s ‘confession’, had she not entered a guilty plea, it would have been
ruled inadmissible (paragraph 109 of Ms Stapel’s statement/‘Transcript p 61). By a letter to
Herbert Smith Freehills dated 11 December 2023 I enquired whether the Post Office
contended that Ms Bernard’s evidence, that she did not believe Mrs Adedayo’s confession,
would have been apparent to Mrs Adedayo prior to November 2023.
In December 2022 Mrs Adedayo reached a settlement of her claims for a modest
sum bearing no relationship to the actual loss and injury that she and her family had suffered
as a result of her malicious prosecution by the Post Office and her wrongful conviction. The
low settlement was ostensibly on “public interest grounds”.
In December 2023 I wrote to Herbert Smith Freehills (copied to Hodge Jones &
Allen) an open letter. I suggested that in the light of Mr Atkinson K.C.’s and Ms Bernard’s
evidence it was clear that Mrs Adedayo should never have been charged with theft and that
she was was the reason wh
suggested that Mrs Adedayo agreed to settle her claims against the Post Office on a false basi
and under a mistake of fact or of law and that the settlement was liable to be set aside, as a
, in terrorem she pleaded guilty to false accounting. I further
matter of right. I pointed out that an alternative b for avoiding the December 2022
settlement agreement was misrepresentation by the Post Office - of various kinds.
On 11 January 2024 I was pleased to see that the Horizon Compensation Advisory
Board, at its tenth meeting on 10 January 2024, recorded at Item 4 of the Board Minutes that:
“In response to questions from the Board, the Minister confirmed that his announcement would lead to full
compensation for those people whose convictions had been overturned in the Crown Courts because the Post
Office had decided that it would not be in the public interest to hold a retrial’. While the wording is not
felicitous, it is clear that the Minister confirmed to the Supervisory Board that the Post Office
would no longer rely upon “public interest” reasons for suppressing the level of compensation
offered to Post Office victims. Further, the Post Office would not hold its victims to low
settlements reached on those grounds. That is to say, the Post Office would not rely upon the
very argument now advanced in its written submissions on Phase 4 at paragraph 38.
Thad understood that the Post Office accepted that those who had previously
reached negotiated settlements on “public interest grounds” would not be held to them and
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they would be entitled to claim full compensation under the Overturned Convictions
compensation scheme (for that is what the Minister said). That was confirmed by the Post
Office’s solicitors. The intimation/threat at paragraph 38.5 of the Post Office’s submissions,
that Mrs Adedayo’s case “may be subject to litigation” remains to be explained, being at odds
with the position recorded in the HCAB minute of 10 January 2024 and since then confirmed
by the Post Office’
payments on account of damage
solicitors (viz settlements previously reached would be treated as interim
5).
It is objectionable that the Post Office, having changed its position on “public
interest” reasons for negotiating low settlements of claims against it, now in its written
submissions to the Inquiry submits that “this is the sole case study where POL does not accept that the
conviction was unsafé,...”. The submission is inconsistent with its changed position on damages
for malicious prosecution. The essence of a civil claim for malicious prosecution is that
prosecution was for an improper or collateral purpose or motive. That the prosecution was
resolved in the claimant’s favour is a necessary condition for a claim. It is not open to the Post
Office to qualify
Post Office “accepts” is irrelevant.
or to attempt to qualify the effect of the quashing of a conviction. What the
A clearer example of inconsistency in approach is difficult to envisage. Not for the
s cake and eat it. The Post Office has
conceded that Mrs Adedayo is entitled to claim damages for malicious prosecution, to the full
extent of her losses, as a matter of private law, yet in the Inquiry the Post Office seeks to
first time, the Post Office appears to want to have i
contend that her conviction was properly obtained. The positions are logically and legally
irreconcilable. Forensic terminology should not diminish or detract either from the
offensiveness of the Post Office’s submission or from the serious distress that it has caused my
client.
Because the Post Offic
with its public averments that it is a reformed institution, it being willing to advance
s submission in relation to Mrs Adedayo appears inconsistent
arguments without regard to directions from the Inquiry, to the legal or factual basis for them,
and in disregard of foreseeable distress thereby caused to its victims ~ almost 20 years after the
events in question, I am copying this letter to Minister Hollinrake. I am also copying the letter
to Professor Chris Hodges, Chair of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board.
Yours sincerely,
Counsel for Mrs Oyeteju Adedayo
Sir Wyn Williams.
Chair
Post Office IT Inquiry
c.c. Minister Hollinrake DBT
Professor Chris Hodges, Chair, Horizon Compensation Scheme Advisory Board
Hodge Jones & Allen, Mike Schwartz