First Rate FX Ltd v Trading By Telephone Ltd & Ors
2014
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
UK
CORAM
- HIS HONOUR JUDGE SEYMOUR QC
Areas of Law
- Commercial Law
- Employment Law
- Civil Procedure
2014
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
UK
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
First Rate FX Limited accused several former employees and competing firms of breaching restrictive covenants and failing to comply with disclosure orders. The court differentiated between defendants based on their compliance, ultimately striking out the defense of the first defendant while ordering specific disclosures from others.
Judgment
JUDGE SEYMOUR : This action has a considerable history in which I have previously been involved. In particular, there was a hearing over three days at the beginning of March of this year. The claimant, First Rate FX Limited, carries on business as a provider of foreign exchange services. It appears that the second defendant carries on a similar business. The assertion on behalf of the various defendants in this action is that the first defendant, a company called Trading By Telephone Limited, has been engaged by the second defendant, which is called Opt FX Limited, to cold call potential purchasers of foreign exchange services. The fourth, fifth, seventh, eighth and ninth defendants are individuals who are employed by the first defendant. They are respectively Mr Scott Gunn, Mr Oliver Davis-Gardner, Mr Billy Martin, Mr Cameron Perry Peter Hassan and Mr Louis Lavers. The third defendant, Mr Daniel Crisp, was formerly employed by the claimant, but he and the claimant agreed upon a parting of the ways in September 2013 and since that point, as I understand it, Mr Crisp has been unemployed and has been spending most of his time in the United Arab Emirates.
The sixth defendant, Mr Bobby Ward, was again previously an employee of the claimant, but he left the employment of the claimant in April of last year. He, like the other individual defendants, who were all previously employees of the claimant, were employed on terms which included restrictive covenants limiting their ability to engage in the provision of foreign exchange services for a period after the termination of their employment. In the case of Mr Ward, the period was six months. There was some evidence before me on the last occasion that Mr Ward had approached one or two companies which had previously been customers of the claimant, but that was in December of last year, after the termination of the period of six months during which he was prohibited from making contact with former clients of the claimant.
The outcome, so far as presently material, of the hearings before me at the beginning of March was that I granted certain injunctions and gave some directions for a speedy trial. Those directions are, to an extent, material to the application which is now before me. At paragraph 5 of my order I directed that there be a speedy trial of the claim. I directed, amongst other things, (paragraph 10):
“The defendants shall serve and file their defences by 4pm on Friday 21 March 2014.”
At para