Scottish Sea Farms renews court bid to ban activist from fish farms
Lawyers for Scotland’s second largest salmon producer, Scottish Sea Farms, have renewed their bid for a court order banning veteran activist Don Staniford from the company’s fish farms and other property.
The request to the Sheriffdom of North Strathclyde for an extended interdict (injunction) against Staniford is based on the precedent set by an interdict that was granted to Mowi Scotland.
SSF’s legal action agreed to pause its action in January last year to allow Staniford’s appeal against the Mowi interdict to run its course. At the same time, Staniford gave an undertaking not to visit SSF’s farms.
Staniford lost his appeal in November.
Removed conditions
He later successfully asked a court to remove some conditions attached to his commitment not to visit SSF facilities, including a ban from encroaching within 15 metres of farms and buildings, because these were given up by Mowi during the appeal process. A ban on Staniford climbing on to fish pens remains in place.
SSF has always maintained that it will seek an interdict once Staniford had exhausted the appeal process against Mowi.
It seeks an order banning Staniford or anyone acting on his behalf from boarding, entering onto, physically occupying, attaching himself to, attaching vessels to, trespassing upon, all structures, docks, walkways, buildings, yards, floats, vessels, boats, or pens of aquaculture sites.
It is also asking the court to order Staniford to pay the legal costs it has incurred in seeking an interdict.
Awarded costs
Staniford is already facing a bill understood to be approximately £123,000 for legal costs incurred by Mowi for securing its interdict and for advice and representation from an advocate at two appeal hearings.
Staniford said he would fight SSF in court, although he no longer has the support of lawyers who had been representing him, effectively for free, in the appeals against Mowi's interdict.
"I will be filing a Notice of Opposition to SSF early next week. If [SSF holding company] Norskott Havbruk think they can ride roughshod over the laws of Scotland then they are in for a rude awakening."
