James MacDonald KC acted for ADS Securities LLC (ADS), the successful respondent in Windhorst v ADS Securities LLC [2026] EWCA Civ 905.
In the judgment, the Court of Appeal dismissed Mr Windhorst’s appeal against the sanction imposed for contempt of court resulting from Mr Windhorst’s deliberate failure to attend an examination under CPR Part 71. It therefore upheld the committal order obtained against him by ADS below.
The appeal arose from ADS’s long-running efforts to enforce a substantial Commercial Court judgment debt against Tennor Holding BV (Tennor), of which Mr Windhorst was a director and controlling mind. Despite repeated Part 71 orders requiring his attendance and the provision of information about Tennor’s means, the examination had still not taken place some three and a half years later — a delay the Court of Appeal described as “verging on extraordinary” and “entirely due to Mr Windhorst’s intransigence and long history of failing to obey orders of the court.”
At first instance, Mrs Justice Dias had found Mr Windhorst in contempt and imposed an 18-month term of imprisonment, suspended on conditions, including a requirement that he produce documents relating to Tennor’s means of payment. She held that the breach was deliberate and contumacious, that his apology was “wholly inadequate”, and that ADS had suffered real prejudice because it had been deprived of the opportunity to obtain information and documents which could have materially assisted its enforcement strategy before Tennor entered liquidation. She found that Mr Windhorst had shown “an utterly cavalier attitude to the order of the court” and “an unacceptable level of disrespect”, concluding that “the court’s patience with Mr Windhorst is exhausted” and that “the time has come for him to face the consequences of his conduct.”
The Court of Appeal upheld the sanction in full. Lord Justice Fraser, with whom Lord Justice Newey agreed, held that the 18-month term was not excessive and was well within the range reasonably open to the judge. The Court endorsed Dias J’s assessment that this was a serious contempt: Mr Windhorst had breached both a court order and his own undertaking, his conduct was prolonged, and his explanations were “threadbare”. Fraser LJ added that “any of those words” — contumelious, contumacious, deliberately insolent, wilful, rebellious, rude, recalcitrant or defiant — could be used to describe Mr Windhorst’s behaviour, and that he appeared to believe that judges in this jurisdiction “must be extraordinarily gullible.”
The judgment is also significant for its confirmation of key principles governing contempt sanctions. Appeals against sentence face a high hurdle: the question is not whether another judge might have selected a different term, but whether the sanction was wrong in principle, disproportionate, or outside the permissible range. The Court also confirmed that, when suspending committal for contempt, the court may impose clear and appropriate conditions, including positive conditions requiring the contemnor to do something. CPR Part 71 does not constrain the court’s inherent contempt jurisdiction; in this case, requiring Mr Windhorst to produce documents 14 days before the examination hearing was “unobjectionable” and “entirely sensible.”
A link to the Judgment can be found below:
View Judgment