Defending claims and an injunction application relating to an alleged breach of confidence

Our clients instructed us after being served with an interim injunction application and claim wrongly alleging misuse of confidential information belonging to a business they had established, but subsequently sold to the claimant. With assistance from leading Counsel, we successfully negotiated a settlement of that matter, which importantly preserved the possibility of our clients establishing a business competing with the claimant.

As time moved on we continued to advise our clients in connection with the establishment of a new business, and recently our clients’ new business was threatened with a further claim and injunction application by the same claimant, alleging breach of confidence, and of the settlement negotiated in the first claim.

We worked, in conjunction with Counsel, to obtain evidence and to draft responses to the allegations which had been made against our clients. This enabled us to successfully avoid the issuing of an injunction by the claimant. Our investigations also revealed that the claimant had made untrue, disparaging comments about our clients in this country, as well as in a foreign market in which they operate. We devised an offensive strategy and commenced work on a strong pre-emptive claim against the claimant. We also engaged foreign lawyers to intimate criminal defamation claims against the claimant and its related group companies in other jurisdictions.

Due to our defence and offensive strategy, our clients’ proceedings did not need to be issued as the claimant refrained from continuing to damage or disparage our clients’ business, and accepted that there had been no breach of the original settlement which had been previously agreed.