Company's Application, Re A
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Date | 1989 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
Confidential Information - Breach of confidence - Public interest - Former employee of company providing financial services - Threat to disclose confidential information to regulatory body and revenue - No threat of disclosure to public - Whether company entitled to injunction
The plaintiff company carried on the business of providing financial advice and management to its clients in respect of their investment portfolios, its business therefore being subject to the regulatory scheme imposed by the Financial Investment Management and Broker's Regulatory Pursuant to the Provisions of the
On the plaintiff's application for, inter alia, an interlocutory injunction restraining the defendant from disclosing to the regulatory body or to the revenue its confidential information or documents: —
Held, that an employee should not be inhibited from disclosing his employer's confidential information to a regulatory body that had the power to investigate whether the employers were complying with the regulatory scheme; that if the employee's allegations were baseless, no harm would be caused to the employer provided the employee neither disclosed the information to other now informed others that he had made the allegations to the regulatory body; that similarly it was not contrary to public policy that an employee should disclose to the revenue his employer's confidential information concerning fiscal matters; that, accordingly, even if the defendant was motivated by malice, no injunction would be granted to prohibit disclosure of the plaintiff's confidential information to the regulatory body or information concerning fiscal matters to the revenue (post, pp. 453D–H, 454A–C, 455D–G).
The following case is referred to in the judgment:
Attorney-General v. Guardian Newspapers Ltd. (No. 2) [
No additional cases were cited in argument.
Motion
By a notice of motion dated 20 January 1989, a company sought an order against a former employee, that he be restrained until after judgment or further order in the meantime from doing (whether acting by himself his servants or agents or any of them or otherwise howsoever) the following acts or any of them without the consent in writing of the plaintiff company or its solicitors, (1)(a) parting with the possession of (other than by delivering the same to the plaintiff or its solicitors), removing from the jurisdiction of the court, hiding, destroying, defacing, amending or altering any of the following “relevant thing,” that was to say, (i) all documents and articles the property of the plaintiff or to the possession of which the plaintiff was entitled, (ii) all documents and articles created by employees of the plaintiff or its predecessor in title (whether employed under a contract of service or under a contract for services) in the course of their employment, (iii) all documents and articles comprising information relating to the identity or affairs of the plaintiff's clients or of any client bank account of the plaintiff, and (iv) all documents and articles comprising a copy or abstract of any part of any document or article aforesaid; (b) disclosing to any person other than the plaintiff or its solicitors or to his professional legal advisors or using any information contained or comprised in any relevant thing, provided that it should not be a breach of the injunction to make and use an affidavit solely for the purposes of the present action; (c) directly or indirectly informing or notifying any person, company or firm of the existence of the proceedings or of the provisions of the order, of the plaintiff's interest in these proceedings, or otherwise warning any person, company or firm that proceedings might be brought against him or her or it by the plaintiff otherwise than for the purpose of seeking legal advice from his lawyers. (2) That the defendant do forthwith make and swear and serve upon the plaintiff's solicitors an affidavit setting out so far as was known to him (a) the whereabouts of all relevant things which were in the defendant's possession, custody, power or control, (b) the names and addresses of all persons to whom the defendant had supplied any relevant thing, and identifying the thing and the date of supply. (3) That the defendant do deliver forthwith to the plaintiff's solicitors all relevant things which were in his possession, custody or power and if any...
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