Tereza Burki v Seventy Thirty Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Richard Parkes |
| Judgment Date | 15 August 2018 |
| Neutral Citation | [2018] EWHC 2151 (QB) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ17X02160/HQ17D00323 |
| Date | 15 August 2018 |
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[2018] EWHC 2151 (QB)
HIS HONOUR JUDGE Richard Parkes QC
Sitting as a Judge of the High Court
Case No: HQ17X02160/HQ17D00323
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Winchester Combined Court Centre
The Law Courts, Winchester, SO23 9EL
Jonathan Edwards (instructed by Charles Douglas Solicitors) for Tereza Burki
Lisa Lacob (instructed by Keystone Solicitors) for Seventy Thirty Limited
Hearing dates: 18–22 June 2018
HHJ Richard Parkes QC:
Introduction
Gertrude Stein quipped that whoever said money can't buy happiness didn't know where to shop. This case is about a woman looking for romantic happiness who says she was tricked into shopping in the wrong place, paying a large sum to a dating agency which, she says, made promises but failed to produce the goods.
Tereza Burki sues a dating agency, Seventy Thirty Ltd (70/30), for deceit and misrepresentation, and seeks the return of her membership fee, and damages for distress; the agency, in a separate action, sues her for libel and malicious falsehood in connection with two online reviews of its service which Ms Burki posted. The two actions were tried together. Ms Burki was represented by Jonathan Edwards, and 70/30 by Lisa Lacob.
Ms Burki gave evidence herself. Her other witnesses were Boriana Errante, a Bulgarian woman living in Geneva, who was an old friend from their youth; Lilia Severina, a woman who got in contact with Ms Burki after what she said was a bad experience with 70/30; Alexandra Wilson, another ex-member of the dating agency; and Emmet Colville, a young man who had worked for 70/30 as a ‘matchmaking specialist’ between 8 December 2014 and April 2015.
The witnesses for 70/30 were Susie Ambrose, who founded, owns and is a director of the agency, and Craig Males, the agency's accountant. The managing director at the time with which this action is concerned, a Mr Lemarc Thomas, was unavailable to give evidence. Ms Ambrose told the court that he now lives abroad and was unwilling to spend time becoming involved in this litigation. If that is correct, I find his attitude astonishing, given that it is Ms Burki's case (as Ms Ambrose must have told him) that he made misrepresentations to her that he knew to be false.
None of the current staff was working for 70/30 when Ms Burki was a client. It appears to have been for that reason that none of them gave evidence.
The court heard a great deal about a number of men whose details, or ‘profiles’, were either supplied to Ms Burki or, on the agency's case, were available to be supplied to her as potential matches. At the start of the trial Ms Lacob, for the agency, applied for an order under CPR 39.2(3)(c) for the trial to take place in private. Her application was founded on an understandable concern for the confidentiality of information held about the agency's clients. A number of client profiles were likely to be contentious during the trial, and she feared that some of the individual clients might be identifiable from their initials and other information revealed about them. I refused the application. It appeared to me that the proper way to protect the confidential information of the relevant clients was either to refer to them simply by their initials, without venting in open court any other information which might make them identifiable, or (if Ms Lacob felt that was insufficient) for her to prepare a table of numbers or letters to be used to refer to each of them, so that not even their initials need be used in open court. In the event, Ms Lacob was content to refer to them by their initials. On no view was there any need for the trial to take place in private.
TEREZA BURKI
Tereza Burki is a divorcee of 47. She has three children from her previous marriages. She lives in Lennox Gardens, between Chelsea and Knightsbridge. From 2008, she was looking for a new partner.
Her requirements were not modest. What she wanted in a partner was a ‘sophisticated gentleman’, ideally employed in the finance industry. It was important to her that her partner should lead a ‘wealthy lifestyle’, and that he should be ‘open to travelling internationally’. For that reason, it would also have been appealing to her that he should have ‘multiple residences’. Above all, the most important characteristic that she looked for in a prospective partner was a preparedness to have more children. She had always wanted four.
The way in which she expressed her criteria in her Re-Amended Particulars of Claim (RAPC, para. 12) was to stipulate ‘openness to having children’ as a necessary criterion, and three overlapping qualities as ‘preferred criteria’: they were (i) a lifestyle similar to or more affluent than her own, (ii) a relatively high degree of remuneration, such as might be typical in finance or a similar field, and (iii) resources and willingness to travel internationally, and in particular, ideally, the possession of several homes, or, as she preferred to put it, ‘multiple residences’.
She went first to an agency called Gray & Farrar, where for a fee of £8,000 she was introduced to a number of men with whom she became friends; but none of the introductions led to a romantic relationship. She said that all the men she met had paid for membership: they had compared notes on the fees charged.
It was against that background that in 2013 she first approached 70/30. Before she did so, she carried out some online research. She looked at the agency's website, which told her that it was an ‘Exclusive Matchmaking and Elite Introduction Agency’ and offered a ‘quintessential, world class matchmaking service to a sophisticated and particular clientele’. Its members, so the website stated, were ‘high net-worth individuals’. She also looked at third party websites where she found reassuring reviews. She was encouraged by what she read.
SEVENTY THIRTY AND SUSIE AMBROSE
Susie Ambrose is a psychotherapist by training. She founded 70/30, which was incorporated in 2001. Its first members were clients of Ms Ambrose's counselling practice, for whom she started matchmaking. It was her evidence that its dating model was based on an integrated approach which looked at the values, lifestyle, beliefs and goals of its members, and it had succeeded in matching at least 6,429 individuals who had gone on to have long-lasting relationships. 63 babies had been born as a result of its introductions.
She was the managing director of 70/30 until March 2011, but gave up that post when she went abroad (it appears to Croatia) to adopt her daughter. Nonetheless, she remained a director and she retained ultimate control of the business, of which she was and still is the sole shareholder. She kept in touch with the business through her managers, and would generally only be in contact with matchmakers if Mr Thomas was away. It seems that Mr Thomas took over from her as managing director in 2011, but left the company in 2016 to live with his partner in Sweden. As I understand it, the senior management roles are now performed by Georgina Barnett, who is head of membership, and Lorraine Donovan, who is head of operations, and manages the matchmakers.
Ms Ambrose's evidence was that the agency currently employs 10 staff and 19 freelance consultants round the world. All of the full time staff worked on matchmaking, including Mr Thomas, when he was managing director. He dealt with people categorised on the database as ‘hot’: they were good looking, high profile people. She said that none of the staff was being called as a witness, because they all started to work for the agency after May 2015, when Ms Burki disengaged with the matchmaking process. She had asked Mr Thomas to give evidence, but he told her that he did not want to be involved: he had moved on and lived abroad and could not remember the details of the operations of 70/30 between 2013 and 2015. She understood that.
According to Ms Ambrose, the agency maintains a database of men and women who could be described as wealthy and/or successful. Before signing up a new member, the agency looked at their profession, property and assets. In cross-examination about the checks that were made, she said that members used to have to show £1m in liquid assets, and give values of properties and works of art, until potential members were frightened off by competitors who told them that 70/30 was ‘digging into their bank accounts’. Mr Thomas therefore decided in about 2012 or 2013 to do background checks, for example by reference to the Land Registry. All members had to give information about their work, and they had to be wealthy. They had to pay a high fee, and checks, including credit checks, were made on them. Asked about the evidence of Alexandra Wilson, a member from 2013 to 2015, that she herself had negligible wealth, Ms Ambrose said that she would have to check the database to know whether that was true, but she knew that the database showed that she had bought a flat in an expensive area. Ms Wilson must either have owned it outright or, if she needed a mortgage, she would have had a substantial income. It was unfortunate that Ms Wilson was not asked any questions about those assertions. Ms Ambrose was also questioned about Ms Burki's wealth, and asked whether she, like 70/30's other clients, was a millionaire. She answered that Ms Burki had said her ex-husband had £200m, and she had a lavish lifestyle that included belonging to expensive clubs, ski-ing and going on cruises, wearing designer clothes. In the circumstances, she would consider her well off. She did not believe that Georgina Barnett (the current head of membership) would have been content with a potential member claiming to have a lot of money, without some checks...
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