Emilia Idziak v Merlin Entertainment PLC & Anor

This decision is made on the papers, the claimant having made a written application for anonymity based upon her own medical conditions and concerns for her child who was not party to the proceedings. Both the first defendant, Merlin Entertainments Ltd, and the second defendant, Buckles Solicitors, object to such an order being made.

This claim has had a long and tortured history although it arises from a straightforward personal injury claim arising from an incident in 2016 when the claimant was a passenger, with her son, on a ride known as Dragon’s Fury at Chessington World of Adventures – a theme park operated by the First Defendant, Merlin Entertainments Plc. The claimant sought damages for personal injury she says was caused by the car on the ride suddenly coming to a halt and then not moving for a period of time.

I am not going to repeat the chronology or history of the litigation, save to record that at the first trial of the claim a Recorder gave judgment for the claimant and damages of approximately £63,000. That decision was overturned on appeal and from that time on the case has had the misfortune of having had decisions made in the county court, which were then appealed, and then continued in the county court. It appeared that the matter had reached a state of stability and was listed for trial, but then no engineering report was disclosed on behalf of the claimant, the claimant’s solicitors came off the record, the claimant did not attend the trial and the claim was dismissed. The solicitors who had been acting for Ms Idziak have now obtained an order for an equitable lien with respect to the costs orders Ms Idziak obtained in those proceedings.

Despite the length of those proceedings and the number of court hearings, the claimant only now seeks an order for anonymity. She seeks that order for anonymity on the basis that during the course of the trial she disclosed her various medical conditions and that there was also reference to her son. She now complains that the lawyers involved in this case conspired against her for their own benefit. Her case was being progressed by her former solicitors and counsel on a conditional fee agreement and it is not clear from her submissions as to how it benefitted her lawyers to unnecessarily extend the length of the case. I heard her various allegations when determining whether there should be an order that the former solicitors were entitled to an equitable lien. I did not find those allegations to be at all convincing and I made the order being sought by her former solicitors.

In her witness statement in support of the application for anonymity, Ms Idziak states that she is a litigant in person and vulnerable and that the application is being made to protect the privacy of her family and to safeguard her fragile mental health which she feels has been severely damaged by “a 10 year legal battle and the professional betrayal I have uncovered. My mental health affects functioning of my body and additional stress puts huge burden on mobility then immobility affects mental health and that can be aggravated by lack of anonymity of this case when I tried to uncover the potential breaches of my 10 year long litigation.” Ms Idziak refers to her own psychiatric conditions and I have seen a report from Dr Agnieszka Klimowicz which concludes that Ms Idziak suffers from persistent depression with nil risk factors “on the backdrop trauma type of symptomatology in relation to the rollercoaster emergency stop in 2016. I advised this is not a typical PTSD, given that she was not in a life threatening situation but perceived it as such. Given that she has problems with pain, I advised that the pain management is required as part of her rehabilitation and treatment of her mental health …”.

Ms Idziak refers in her witness statement to the underlying claim arising from an accident in 2016 “involving myself and my son, who was 8 years old at the time”. Ms Idziak alleges that her son has suffered long-term physical and psychological effects from this accident. She says that he is now entering adulthood and that his identity should be protected from public record. She makes reference to an authority JMX v BusinessAsUsual [2010] EWHC 783(QB) with respect to the protection of the anonymity of children. I have not been able to find this case and it may be a AI generated hallucination. I am very happy to be corrected about that, but would need to see the judgment itself.

There is no medical evidence with respect to Ms Idziak’s son. He is not a party to the proceedings and he made no claim that he had been injured by reason of the emergency stop of Dragon’s Fury. There is no requirement for anonymisation of Ms Idziak’s son, as he is not named, and I am not satisfied that any potential “jigsaw identification” merits a derogation from the fundamental principle of open justice. I am told that he was 8 at the time of the incident in 2016, and that he now aged 18 years. He is no longer a minor. It is highly significant that he is not a party to the proceedings himself and there is (and was) no need for Ms Idziak to bring his details into this matter.

In addition to not ordering anonymisation of a person not party to the proceedings and who was not mentioned, other than by his mother, I am not going to order anonymisation of Ms Idziak. The reason for that decision is as follows.

The starting point is that justice is open and parties are not anonymised in civil proceedings, unless there is a statutory reason or an order is made for anonymisation and/or reporting restrictions. Authoritative guidance was given by the Court of Appeal in PMC v Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board [2025] EWCA Civ 1126 with respect to the principles of open justice and derogations from that principle.

The context of PMC was the grant of anonymisation and reporting restriction orders in a clinical negligence case. It is, however, a decision of much wider impact. The starting point is that cases will be heard in public unless there is a strict necessity to depart from that rule (Scott v Scott [1913] AC 917). There is, as was explored in PMC, an inherent power in the court derived from the common law to derogate from the principle of open justice in civil or family court proceeding by making withholding and reporting restrictions order where such an order is strictly necessary in the interests of justice. As Earl Loeburn put it in Scott v Scott it is impossible to enumerate or anticipate all possible contingencies.

In JIH v News Group Newspapers Limited [2011] EWCA Civ 42, the Court of Appeal laid down the approach to an application for an order prohibiting the publication of private information, balancing article 8 rights against the article 10 right to freedom of expression, to ensure that the circumstances of the case were sufficiently strong to justify encroaching, to the minimum necessary extent, on the cardinal rule of open justice. Lord Neuberger MR, giving the judgment of the court, said as follows:

I have to consider the article 10 rights of the public at large and the article 3 and 8 rights of the claimant. Lord Steyn identified four principles in the exercise of balancing competing human rights - In re S (A child):

CPR 39.2 provides that hearings are to be in public, subject to specific situations where the court may sit in private – for example where publicity would defeat the object of the hearing (CPR 39.3(a)) or to protect the interests of a child or protected party (CPR 39.3(d)). All the hearings in this matter, including the trial, have been in public - “the principle of open justice is one of the precious in our law”: R(C) v Justice Secretary [2016] UKSC 2. Ms Idziak did not request before any hearing that it be heard in private and the amount of material about Ms Idziak and this claim which is already in the public domain would render any effort to anonymise unworkable and futile (see both PMC and XXX v Camden LBC [2020] EWCA Civ 1468).

There are statutory reporting restrictions which cover victims of sexual offences, family law and the identities of children in certain circumstances. None of those statutory restrictions apply to this case.

CPR 39.2(4) provides that the court must order that the identity of any  person shall not be disclosed if, and only if, it considers non-disclosure necessary to secure the proper administration of justice and in order to protect the interests of any person. Ms Idziak did not seek anonymity until now, at the conclusion of the many County Court hearings, together with the appeal hearings that have taken place in the High Court. I cannot discern from her submissions why her position has altered now that the civil case is at an end, subject to any further points she seeks to raise by way of an appeal or by way of complaint against legal professionals.

I have undertaken the necessary balancing exercise. The issues raised by her with respect to seeking privacy are not issues that she raised throughout the many hearings. The limited medical evidence that Ms Idziak has provided does not suggest that continued publication of her name at this time would cause an exacerbation of her mental health issues. There is no suggestion that her name in these proceedings over many years was causing mental health difficulties when the psychiatrist and GP reported, respectively, in August and December 2025.

Dr Manjuy Chandrasekharan, her GP, wrote on 10 December 2025 that Ms Idziak required reasonable adjustments as her ability to function for long periods of time had been impacted adversely and she struggled to concentrate without breaks. Reasonable adjustments were given to Ms Idziak and she was able to take breaks whenever she needed. There is nothing within the GP’s letter to support the need for anonymity.

With respect to the report of Dr Klimowicz, the Consultant Psychiatrist, dated 4 August 2025, there is nothing to support an order for anonymity – particularly at the end of all the hearings that have now taken place. As set out above, Dr Klimonwicz diagnoses depression.

Ms Idziak is the claimant in these proceedings. The medical evidence supports her case that she suffers depression against the “backdrop” of the sudden stop on the rollercoaster. She does not suffer from “typical PTSD” according to the Consultant Psychiatrist. There is no link between her name being in these proceedings and her suffering mental illness or interference with her recovery from mental illness.

I have considered Ms Idziak’s Article 3 and Article 8 rights and have concluded that, in all the circumstances of this matter, the necessity to interfere with the public’s Article 10 rights and the open justice principle has not been made out. In the circumstances, therefore, her application for anonymity fails.