The defendants' application to purge their admitted civil contempt for breach of the Harman undertaking was dismissed; the plaintiffs' contempt application succeeded in obtaining findings of guilt against both defendants, with penalty to be determined at a separate hearing. The court held that while the contempt was at the lower end of severity — involving non-confidential videos uploaded to a website through carelessness rather than deliberate defiance — the defendants failed to provide full and frank disclosure of material circumstances in their purge application affidavits, particularly the second defendant's December 2024 awareness that the videos originated from the plaintiffs and his subsequent legal consultation, which only emerged under cross-examination. The decision confirms that on a purge application the contemnor bears the onus on the balance of probabilities, and that full and frank disclosure is assessed as part of whether the apology is genuine, even where the contempt itself is admitted and objectively minor.
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