Sean Hanna Ltd v Barber and Another
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Wilkie |
| Judgment Date | 03 June 2015 |
| Neutral Citation | [2015] EWHC 3113 (QB) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 03 June 2015 |
| Docket Number | Case No: IHQ/15/0286 |
[2015] EWHC 3113 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Wilkie
Case No: IHQ/15/0286
Mr Huw Davis appeared on behalf of the Claimant
Mr T Barber litigant in person
Sean Hanna Limited is a business which runs a number of hair stylists, one of which is located at 48 Grand Arcade, St Andrew Street, Cambridge. They seek an interim injunction pending trial or pending a prior date, to which I will refer in a moment, against Troy Barber who was employed as a hair stylist at the Cambridge premises by the Claimant until 28 March 2015, he having started in February 2009. The application is on notice. Mr Barber has attended without legal representation and has given evidence and represented himself in person. He has also been assisted in making those representations by his father.
Mr Barber accepts that he was employed by Sean Hanna Limited under a contract which contained a number of terms and conditions. They included the following two terms. Firstly, Troy Barber would not practice for payment or reward the craft for which he was employed by the Claimant within a half mile radius of the Claimant's salon for a period of six months after termination of his employment except on behalf of the Claimant and, secondly, that he would not, during his employment or within six months of termination, induce or undertake any act … likely or intended to induce any customer or client of the Claimant to whom he had provided professional services during the course of his employment to cease to patronise the business or premises of the Claimant.
Mr Barber accepts that at some point after his employment terminated on 28 March, he came to an agreement with Webber & Co., which is a salon operating within the half mile radius from Sean Hanna Limited's Cambridge salon and that he has been working as a hair stylist from those premises. His evidence, which I accept, is that he is not employed by Webber & Co., but he has an arrangement by which he rents a chair at those premises and from which he conducts his self-employed business of being a hair stylist. He arranges for his own clients. He makes appointments with his own clients and he fixes the fee that he charges with his own clients independently from Webber & Co. He trades, essentially, by way of mobile phone and through social media, and, to that end, he had advertised in a local life and style magazine the fact that he was continuing his trade as a hair stylist from Webber & Co.'s premises in Cambridge and he also included an announcement of his continuation of his practice of his trade from Webber & Co., on his Facebook account. He has, amongst the friends on that account, a substantial number of his clients whom he had when he worked for Sean Hanna Limited. Mr Barber is plainly a stylist of some talent and his clients, as would be expected, have been loyal to him and the clear inference is that a number of them have been attracted by his advertisements to follow him to where is now practising his trade and, as a consequence, have ceased to be clients of Sean Hanna Limited....
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