Arcadia Group Ltd v Telegraph Media Group Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Warby |
| Judgment Date | 23 January 2019 |
| Neutral Citation | [2019] EWHC 96 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ18M02611 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 23 January 2019 |
[2019] EWHC 96 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Warby
Case No: HQ18M02611
James Price QC, Robert Marven QC and Chloe Strong (instructed by Schillings International LLP) for the Claimants
Desmond Browne QC and Jonathan Price (instructed by Ince Gordon Dadds LLP) for the Defendant
Hearing date: 21 January 2019
Judgment Approved by the court for handing down
(subject to editorial corrections)
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Introduction
A number of pre-trial applications are now before the Court in this case, which has already received a good deal of publicity. It is a claim by two companies and one individual for an injunction to restrain the Telegraph Media Group from publishing information about the claimants. The claimants' case is that the information is confidential information, received by the defendant in the knowledge that the disclosure to it was made in breach of duties of confidence owed to the claimants. The claimants are Arcadia Group Ltd, Topshop/Topman Ltd, and Sir Philip Green. I shall refer to the corporate claimants as “Arcadia” and “Topshop” or, collectively, “the Companies”, and to the third claimant as “Sir Philip”.
The case in summary
The claim was prompted by an email sent on 16 July 2018 by Daniel Foggo, a journalist working for the Daily Telegraph, to Neil Bennett of Arcadia and Sir Philip (“the Foggo Email”). The Foggo Email notified its addressees that the paper was preparing for publication an article containing allegations of misconduct on the part of the claimants, which had been the subject of non-disclosure agreements (“NDAs”). The Foggo Email gave details of the alleged misconduct, referring to five named individual complainants. It was said, among other things, that “there is a significant public interest in investigating and reporting on the use of NDAs in employment cases.” The email asked seven questions, asking for responses by 4pm the following day.
The claimants applied for an interim injunction to restrain disclosure of the information pending trial, asserting rights of confidentiality under or by virtue of the NDAs. Haddon-Cave J (as he then was) refused the application, for reasons given in a public judgment ( [2018] EWHC 2177 (QB)), and a more extensive private judgment. But the claimants appealed. An injunction was granted pending the appeal. And after a hearing in September 2018, the Court of Appeal reversed the Judge's decision, and imposed an interim injunction to preserve the alleged confidentiality until after judgment in the action, directing a speedy trial. Again, there was a public judgment, dated 23 October 2018 ( [2018] EWCA Civ 2329), and a private one containing more detail.
Up to and including that stage the case had been known as ABC, DEF, and GHI v Telegraph Media Group. The claimants had all been anonymised by order of the Court, from the outset. The Court of Appeal made a further anonymity order. But after the Court of Appeal decision, the third claimant was publicly identified in Parliament, and the disclosure of his identity was very widely reported. The anonymity orders became pointless. So, by consent, those orders have been discharged.
The Parliamentary disclosure did not include details of the underlying information, which remains protected by the interim injunction. The parties have exchanged written statements of their cases. Stated very broadly, the statements of case give rise to the following main issues:-
(1) Whether the defendant came under a duty of confidence in respect of the information at issue.
(2) If so, whether the disclosure of the information is nevertheless required or justified in the public interest.
The trial is due to begin before me in two weeks' time, on 4 February 2019. The parties have given disclosure of documents. Trial witness statements are yet to be exchanged.
Applications
The matters before me now are as follows:
(1) An application filed by the claimants on 20 December 2018, by which they seek orders requiring the defendant to identify certain of its sources of information (“the Source Disclosure Application”). This first came before me on 28 December 2018, when I directed that it should be heard on the first available date in January 2019.
(2) An application filed by the claimants on 27 December 2018, and amended on 31 December 2018, seeking orders for further and better disclosure of documents by the defendant. This (“the Claimants' Disclosure Application”) was dealt with in part by Lambert J on 3 January 2019, but some issues remain in dispute.
(3) An application filed by the defendant on 20 December 2018, seeking further disclosure from the claimants. This (“the Defendants' Disclosure Application”) was also dealt with in part by Lambert J on 3 January 2019, but she gave the defendant liberty to restore some aspects of the application, and on 11 January 2019 it served notice that it wishes to do so (the “Notice to Restore”).
(4) I was also due to deal also with an application filed by the defendant on 15 January 2019, seeking an order for disclosure against three third-party individuals (“the Defendants' Third Party Disclosure Application”). The defendant (as it now appears, by accident) sought an immediate disposal on paper. I directed that these matters should be dealt with at this hearing. Late last Friday, the defendant withdrew the application.
(5) Costs budgeting. Directions given by the Court of Appeal's Order of 30 October 2018 provided for the filing, exchange and service of budgets and budget discussion reports, with a costs management conference scheduled for the first available date after 11 January 2019. My Order of 28 December 2018 provided for any remaining disputes as to costs budgeting to be dealt with simultaneously with the Source Disclosure Application.
Privacy and reporting restrictions
In their application notice of 20 December 2018, the claimants sought an order that the hearing of the Source Disclosure Application be in private, and subject to a reporting restriction order. They also sought orders protecting the application documents from disclosure to third parties. At one stage it appeared that the parties had reached agreement that the hearing could take place in public provided steps were taken to anonymise the complainants to whom reference had to be made, discretion was used in what was said in open court, and suitable protection was put in place for the contents of sensitive documents. In the end, however, Leading Counsel were agreed that it would be impossible to do justice to their clients' cases if the hearing took place in public. After hearing argument, I was persuaded that this was so, and directed that the hearing of the disclosure applications would proceed in private, pursuant to CPR 39.2(3) (a), (c) and (g). I granted the application for reporting restrictions, and for restrictions on access to and disclosure of documents. A factor in my decision was that there would in any event be a public judgment. This is that judgment, which is not subject to any reporting restriction.
Conclusions and orders
During the hearing I made the following decisions on the applications, reserving my reasons to this Judgment:
(1) In the light of some further concessions by the defendant, and an undertaking on behalf of the defendant to formalise these by amendments to the Defence, I decided that no order should be made on the Source Disclosure Application. But I did not dismiss it. I will keep the issue under review in the light of developments in the case. I explain this decision further in the next section of this judgment.
(2) I made no order on the Claimants' Disclosure Application. As Ms Strong conceded, it was hard to press this application given my conclusion on the Source Disclosure Application; the two were closely linked. There was some force in Ms Strong's complaints about the inadequacy of the Defendant's Disclosure Statement, which was less than detailed. A witness statement seeking to explain and justify the extremely succinct account of the documents that were or had been in the defendant's possession seemed to me to undermine its own point. It gave more details than the list (thus making clear that the list could have been fuller than it was) yet failed to explain why, or even to state unequivocally that, the defendant could not give yet further details of the documents or parts of documents inspection of which was objected to. Nonetheless, in the end, I was not persuaded that the time, effort and expense that would be consumed by the preparation of a further and better list of documents would be proportionate to any legitimate aim pursued by the claimants.
(3) On the Defendant's Disclosure Application, I ordered the claimants to disclose some without prejudice correspondence relating to the claims settled by NDAs, in so far as it was relevant to issues raised in Confidential Schedule B to the Defence. My decisions on four other aspects of the application as presented by Mr Browne were as follows:-
a) An application for disclosure of the decision letter relating to an internal appeal hearing of 19 April 2018, concerning an employee grievance. I was not satisfied that any such document existed. Ms Strong told me on instructions that the appeal was settled, so there was no hearing, and that the settlement documents had been disclosed. Mr Browne was in no position to controvert this, by evidence or otherwise.
b) Two categories of document referred to in a substantial witness statement served the night...
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Various Claimants v MGN Ltd
...necessity of disclosure.” 20 Both parties drew our attention to the helpful summary of principles by Warby J in Arcadia Group Limited and others v Telegraph Media Group Limited [2019] EWHC 96 (QB) at [15], which I accept as correct: “The following principles are now clearly established, an......
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Arcadia Group Ltd v Telegraph Media Group Ltd
...the Court of Appeal last October, [2018] EWCA Civ 2329 and, in shorter form, in a judgment of mine, handed down on 21 January 2019, [2019] EWHC 96 (QB). 3 The Court of Appeal, reversing the Judge at first instance, granted an injunction until after judgment in the action. It ordered the t......