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BCL Law Notes Commercial Remedies BCL Notes

Universal Thermosensors V. Hibben Notes

Updated Universal Thermosensors V. Hibben Notes

Commercial Remedies BCL Notes

Commercial Remedies BCL

Approximately 497 pages

These are detailed case summaries (excerpts from cases - not paraphrased) I made during the Oxford BCL for the Commercial Remedies course....

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Commercial Remedies BCL Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Universal Thermosensors v. Hibben

Facts

A group of employees left their employment to set up a competing business on their own. Dishonestly, they took away with them copies of documents of their erstwhile employer, containing information about customers. The employer found out what had happened and was justifiably angry. So the company launched proceedings, seeking an injunction and damages. An Anton Piller “search and seize” order was obtained on 3 April 1990 and was executed early in the morning at the homes of three of the defendants, and at the trading premises of two companies in the absence of any representatives of the companies. Documents and components were seized and taken away. An interlocutory injunction was granted on 9 July 1990. Unfortunately, serious mistakes were made in the execution of the Anton Piller order. It was now the turn for the defendants to be upset and angry. The new business collapsed. So the defendants brought a claim for damages, including exemplary damages, under the plaintiff's undertaking in the Anton Piller order of 3 April. They claimed that the interlocutory injunction of 9 July was too wide, and claimed damages under that head also.

Setting up of the new company: There was some unease about the future of the company under Mr. James' control, and Mrs. Hibben did not wish to continue to work there once Mr. Baylis had gone. She told Mr. James this on the day Mr. Baylis left, and she also left the company at that time. Over the years some members of the plaintiff's staff found that Mr. James was not always the easiest person to work for. From time to time there had been casual conversations between Mrs. Hibben and the second and third defendants, among many others, about the possibility of their setting up their own business.

Neither Mr. Baldock nor Mrs. Lawrence was happy about the plaintiff's future. The three of them talked about the possibility of starting up a thermocouple business of their own. A few weeks later they met again, and decided to look into the viability of such a business. The upshot was that the fourth defendant, Thermo Probes Ltd. (“T.P.L.”), was acquired by them in mid-January 1989. The shareholders were Mrs. Hibben (50 per cent.), Mr. Baldock (25 per cent.) and Mrs. Lawrence (10 per cent.). They were also the directors. The remaining 15 per cent. of the shares were held by nominees on behalf of Mr. Michael Powell and Mr. Barry Johnson, who were employed by the plaintiff as assembly workers.

Documents stolen from the plaintiff: During the same period of nine months documents belonging to the plaintiff and containing information which the three individual defendants thought might be useful for the purposes of the new business, were dishonestly taken away from the plaintiff's premises by Mr. Baldock and Mrs. Lawrence. Mr. Baldock had in his desk a bundle of spent “Mike's copies,” and he took these to help him, by identifying the most popular types of thermocouples, to work out which items T.P.L., the new company, should stock from the outset. About a month later Mr. Baldock stole from the plaintiff's office a document referred to at the trial as “the updated Dawn Cole list” of the plaintiff's customers.

For her part Mrs. Lawrence dishonestly removed from the plaintiff's premises over a period of months up to September 1989 many documents belonging to the plaintiff: drawings of assemblies of components, on which she had written the plaintiff's prices; one of “Mike's copies;” and some “packing” cards, sent to customers with their order, on which appeared or on which she wrote the plaintiff's code reference to the component and the price. The list as produced by the plaintiff following execution of the Anton Piller order extends to 47 pages. This list was referred to at the trial as “the item three list.” The remaining 33 pages comprised a typed list of the names, addresses and telephone numbers, and internal contacts of over 200 companies which can be called customers of the plaintiff if this expression is used as embracing, in some instances, persons who had not placed an order with the plaintiff for some years.

Sometime after removing “Mike's copies” and the updated Dawn Cole list, Mr. Baldock became anxious over what he had done. He and Mrs. Hibben went for advice to a firm of solicitors, Argles & Court, probably in June 1989, but possibly in August. They were advised, in the course of a brief interview, that they were entitled to use information about the plaintiff's customers which they carried in their heads but not information derived from the plaintiff's customer list or from the plaintiff's pricing matrix of which they also had a copy dated January 1989.

Ex parte injunction and Anton Piller Order: Early in October Mr. James learned that the three individual defendants had set up the new company and were sending out advertising literature. The upshot was an ex parte application to Millett J. on 3 April.

The order made by Millett J. covered much ground, and was therefore long and complicated. For present purposes all I need mention is that the first four defendants were restrained for one week from copying or destroying any documents containing information...

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