A Shade Greener, Stewart Davies & Brian David Fowler – SLAPP Alert

Customers of solar panel provider A Shade Greener (whose owner is former Darlington FC Chairman Stewart Davies) have been subject to threats of defamation proceedings, and in the case of three customers actually sued for libel.

Seemingly these libel cases are SLAPPs which should have never been threatened, let along brought to the High Court.

Who are A Shade Greener?

A Shade Greener claims to have installed solar panels on around 70,000 homes in the UK, however customers have complained that their contracts are lacking detail, hard to get out of – and some customers have been threatened with legal action.

Complaints about A Shade Greener are rife. A Shade Greener have been featured on the BBC’s Watchdog and Rip Off Britain, prompting a lengthy response, presumably written by lawyers.

The complaints are not just limited to national television. The Money Saving Expert website has at least 10 different threads of complaints about A Shade Greener, according to Google.

There is a dedicated Facebook group for customer complaints, with nearly 2,000 members.

Curiously there is a Trustpilot page, which has a huge amount of 5-star reviews and a huge amount of 1-star reviews – but not a lot inbetween….. In my experience, this is typical of companies who pay for 5-star reviews in the hope that they out-weigh the 1-star reviews – specialist businesses offering this service are often based in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. It would of course be defamatory to speculate or suggest that such companies have been engaged by A Shade Greener to create fake TrustPilot reviews.

All of this paints the picture that A Shade Greener may not be quite the perfect business for solar panels after all……

Dodgy Defamation Claims

Customers who have had issues with A Shade Greener have been threatened with legal action, and in some cases taken to Court by in-house solicitor Brian David Fowler (previously of Foys Solicitors).

Accordingly to the Daily Mail, one customer was sued for libel with A Shade Greener seeking some £320,000. The original claim for libel was dropped before it being continued on the grounds of “harassment” and breach of contract. Latterly, the whole claim was dropped.

In another defamation claim, a customer was sued for £100,000 because A Shade Greener had supposedly lost a “multi-million pound” contract…. But there seems to be no connection in seeking the actual losses of the supposedly lost contract – which questions why they sought damages of a very round £100,000 – rather than the precise value of the contract that was ‘lost’?

Whether £320K or £100K, these purported damages were sought because of posts on Facebook and TrustPilot. Quite how despite a raft of other complaints A Shade Greener singled out two individuals remains a mystery – particularly when you may think that a BBC Watchdog or Rip Off Britain would cause more reputational damage than two upset customers?

The reality is these defamation claims were on dodgy grounds, especially after the failed BW Legal vs Trustpilot claim, which His Honour Judge Lewis threw out with a Summary Judgement in June 2024. There was no way in hell that A Shade Greener would be able to even come close to surmounting a case under Section 1(2) of the Defamation Act 2013.

Unsurprisingly, these ill-advised defamation claims have now been abandoned – however, according to CE File, A Shade Greener have issued quite a few claims in the Media and Communications List in the High Court.

Reports are that David Brian Fowler left his job one day at Foys Solicitors and began working for A Shade Greener as the in-house solicitor the next; (this is after A Shade Greener’s previous in-house solicitor Gary Anderson ran into trouble with the SRA) – but the Law Society website has not been updated to reflect this. According to the SRA website, Brian David Fowler works for a non-regulated firm – which brings into question how it is he can practice litigation in the way he has, especially threatening customers with litigation.

Fowler’s former employers, Foys Solicitors, perhaps not by coincidence have an office in a town called Clowne – which may tell you all you need to know about the abilities of their esteemed former employee.

Really, all these defamation claims appear to be SLAPPs, probably designed to shut the aggrieved customers up, and cost them tens of thousands of pounds in the process. Let’s hope all these claims have been abandoned, and that those sued are given 100% of their costs, without too much of a fight!

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme!

What do questionable energy companies, thousands of customer complaints, legal threats on ‘the small guys’ (instead of the BBC or mainstream media) and dodgy defamation claims in the High Court all have in common?

Seemingly football clubs and their chairmen!

The owner of A Shade Greener is the former Darlington FC Chairman Stewart Davies.

Some may draw comparisons to the issues described with A Shade Greener and their litigation strategy to another energy company involving a (now jailed) football chairman. As I said, history may not necessarily repeat itself but it does rhyme!