Lucas (T.) & Company Ltd v Mitchell
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE RUSSELL |
| Judgment Date | 28 July 1972 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1972] EWCA Civ J0728-1 |
| Docket Number | 1972 T No. 660 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 28 July 1972 |
[1972] EWCA Civ J0728-1
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
On Appeal from the High Court of Justice
Chancery Division
Group (A)
(The Vice-Chancellor)
Lord Justice Russell
Lord Justice Cairns and
Lord Justice Stamp
MR. MORRIS FINER Q. C, and MR. CHRISTOPHER HEATH (instructed by Messrs. Linklaters & Paine's, Solicitors, London) appeared on behalf of the Plaintiffs (Appellants).
MR. N. C H. BROWNE -WILKINSON Q. C. and MR. GAVIN LIGHTMAN (instructed by Messrs. Pritchard Engle field & Tobin, Solicitors, London) appeared on behalf of the Defendant (Respondent).
The Judgment I am about to deliver is the judgment of the court.
It is perhaps unfortunate that this appeal from a refusal of the Vice-Chancellor (1972) Volume 1, Weekly Law Reports, page 938, of an interlocutory injunction should have to be dealt with at this stage in the term. A result will be that our judgment will be less full than we would have preferred it to be in order to do full justice to the arguments fully deployed before us.
We do not propose to rehearse the facts which may be obtained from the above report.
The first question concerns the agreement in clause 16, or that part of it which is designed to prevent the defendant employee for a period of 1 year after his employment determined on 10th December 1971 from (either directly or indirectly whether as principal partner agent servant or assistant) within the Greater Manchester area dealing in any goods similar to or capable of being used in place of any of the articles of the employer which had been within his duties as salesman in that area. The primary argument for saying that such a restraint is wider than necessary for the protection of the employer's business was this: the only respect in which it was asserted that the business was entitled to protection was the trade connection of the employer consisting of the customers in the defendant's district of Greater Manchester with whom and with whose needs and idiosyncrasies the defendant would have become familiar on behalf of the employer: the employer's customers in the defendant's district were not members of the general public but other manufacturers or tradesmen whose names and addresses would be well known to the employer: each of these would be, soon after the determination of the defendant'semployment, regularly and frequently visited on the six "journeys" into which the district was divided by a successor of the defendant and it would not be difficult to find out if any of them had been solicited or supplied whether directly or indirectly by the defendant: therefore a restraint on soliciting and supplying would suffice to protect the trade connection, and the restraint on dealing in the district would have an illegitimate element of prevention of mere competition that was not necessitated by any real difficulty in policing a solicitation and supply restraint. As at present advised, having regard to the nature of the employer's trade and the employee's work in this case, we are persuaded by this argument that the employer has not shown that a restraint on dealing in the area is reasonably required for the protection of its trade connection. It follows that in our opinion the restraint on dealing is not enforceable.
The second question is whether the solicitation and supply restraint, which admittedly if it stood alone would be a valid restraint, is...
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