Dare International Ltd Claimant v (1) Stephen Soliman

Hearing dates: November 5–8, 11–15, 18–20, 22

Approved Judgment

This judgment was handed down remotely at 10.30am on 5 February 2025 by circulation to the parties or their representatives by e-mail and by release to the National Archives.

Dare International Ltd (“Dare”) seeks damages and injunctive relief against two former employees, Stephen Soliman (D1) and Ashely Hikmet (D2) (D1 and D2 will be referred to collectively as “the Defendants”). D1 and D2 worked for Dare as Senior Traders. They have accepted offers of employment with Dare's principal rival, Onyx Capital Management Limited (“Onyx”) to work in their nascent Dubai office. ¹ Dare invites the Court to (i) enforce post-termination restraints by way of final injunction; (2) grant springboard relief to cancel the unlawful advantage gained by the Defendants' alleged wrongdoing whilst employed by Dare; and (3) make findings on liability with respect to alleged breaches of contract and fiduciary duty. Quantum (if any) will be addressed at a further hearing. Dare also alleges that the Defendants were unjustly enriched on the basis that they were paid their base salary under a mistake of fact: that the Defendants were too sick to work.

On 18 July 2024, Anthony Metzer KC, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court, accepted undertakings from the Defendants that they would comply with the terms of the post-termination restraints contained in their contracts of employment, and ordered a speedy trial. Prior to the trial, there were a number of applications to determine case management matters.

The trial of the claim took place over 13 days, starting on 5 November 2024. At trial, I was asked to hear evidence in private with respect to (i) Dare's alleged confidential information; and (ii) D1's medical condition. I agreed to these requests on the basis that, in my judgment, with respect to (i) there was a strong prima facie case that the material which would be discussed was confidential to Dare and would cause damage if it was publicly aired. With respect to (ii), it was clear to me that the medical information went to the heart of D1's right to private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In respect of both sets of information, I considered that a fair trial could only be ensured by holding parts of the hearing in private, and this outweighed the open justice principle on the very specific facts of this case.

At trial, I also made a number of restricted reporting orders, prohibiting the publication of very specific information that had inadvertently been mentioned in the public hearing regarding aspects of Dare's alleged confidential information and D1's confidential medical information.

During the trial, I heard evidence from Ayman Rahman, Dare's Chief Executive Officer and one of its founders, and Jonathan Ooi, Dare's Chief Investment Officer and Head of Trading and another one of Dare's founders. The Defendants gave evidence on behalf of themselves. The Court also heard evidence from four medical experts.

I did not hear evidence from Thomas Law, another former Senior Trader who had resigned from Dare at around the same time as D1. Dare also issued legal proceedings against Mr Law, and a speedy trial was ordered to commence on 20 January 2025 ². I heard some evidence about Mr Law, and will be required to make some findings

As I will explain, I have found that some of the information that Dare has sought to protect as confidential is rightly to be treated as confidential. So as to safeguard the confidentiality of that information, I shall refer to it generically in this judgment (and remove specific references from quoted documents) and will provide more detail in a short confidential annexe. I will also produce a confidential annexe which sets out more details of D1's medical condition and the evidence that was presented to the Court about it.

Approach to evidence

The Court was provided with voluminous written evidence. The Court also heard from each of the key actors over a period of days. I consider that each of the witnesses tried to be helpful to the Court and gave truthful and reliable evidence on most of the matters about which they were asked. For each of them, however, there were aspects of their evidence which was not reliable. As a result, contrary to the submissions of the parties, I do not automatically prefer the evidence of Dare's witnesses or that of either of the Defendants whenever there is a dispute between them with respect to a particular event or matter.

To give a flavour of some of the difficulties the Court had with the truthfulness or reliability of each of the witnesses, I will set out some examples. There were occasions when their oral evidence flew in the face of contemporaneous materials written by them or by third parties. For instance, Mr Ooi was asked questions about the mental health of traders at Dare, and in particular the email from Tris Murley (Dare's Performance Manager) dated 3 December 2023 which described Mr Murley's concerns about traders' mental health. Mr Ooi said in evidence that what was being described related only to the period following D1's resignation. That was plainly wrong. Whilst it may be the case that matters got worse after D1's resignation, the email from Mr Murley was clearly referring also to the period before D1's resignation. Similarly, Mr Rahman's evidence about whether or not he had used the term “partnership” with the Defendants when discussing a new arrangement for them in early 2021 was not reliable, as it was directly contradicted by a document that was disclosed by Dare, and produced to the Court, on day 9 of the trial (discussed further at paragraphs 35–39 below).

There were occasions when seemingly important evidence was provided to the Court which ought to have been included in their extensive and carefully crafted witness statements raising doubts as to its reliability. There were occasions when witnesses did not recall certain events or conversations. I found that this was defensive and was intended to conceal potentially harmful evidence from the Court, rather than a genuine expression of a failure in memory. Whilst I do not doubt that witnesses could not recall the detail of every conversation or meeting, there seemed to be an element of selectivity: remembering information that was thought to be helpful to one's case. This was especially the case with D1 who repeatedly said that he could not recall the content of conversations that he had with John Beckwith, the Chief People Officer of Onyx, but could remember details of other matters that occurred around the same time.

D2 belatedly acknowledged that he had deliberately deleted certain evidence — emails from Mr Beckwith — which had been drafted for D2 to send on to Dare in response to various requests or communications. D2 admitted that he had been requested to delete these emails by Mr Beckwith. This was presumably done so as to conceal Mr Beckwith's involvement in that correspondence if litigation did transpire. D2 also allowed his solicitors to give a false impression as to what happened to those emails when asked specifically about them in pre-trial correspondence with Dare's solicitors: Allen & Overy LLP (now A&O Shearman). The fact that D2 had done this meant that the Court was alive to the possibility that other relevant correspondence may have been deleted, and that other aspects of the evidence may not be totally reliable.

D2 had also allowed his solicitors to give a false impression to Dare's solicitors in their response to the letter before claim sent on 11 June 2024. In that letter, Fox Williams, the solicitors for D2, wrote that “Since his resignation, our client has not spoken to either Mr Soliman or Mr Law (nor any other employee of Dare) about his resignation from Dare or his plans for future employment”. This was plainly untrue, as D2 had had the conversation with Mr Law at the Oka restaurant on 8 May 2024. In cross-examination, D2 said that he had not seen the reference to Mr Law in the letter when it was shown to him by his solicitors, but only the reference to D1. This was not a credible response: the letter did not just refer to D1 and Mr Law, it referred also to “any other employee of Dare”.

Both Defendants have suggested that they did not always set out their true feelings and thoughts in some of the pre-resignation correspondence with, in particular, Mr Rahman. They both stated that they hid their disappointment with, and on occasion opposition to, Mr Rahman's statements or activities so as not to upset him. I accept that this may have happened on occasion, but it was not always the case. Mr Rahman accepted in cross-examination that when discussing the Dubai venture (discussed at paragraphs 31–34 below), D1 told him that he no longer trusted him, and he accused Mr Rahman to his face of lying.

The Defendants sought to convey to the Court that they were scared of Mr Rahman. I do not find that this was how they viewed Mr Rahman during the period before their resignations from Dare. Overall, the evidence demonstrated...